A Rose Without Thorns
by greengirlblue
Summary: A fractured fairytale of mirrors, quests, and keys to the heart. References children's lit, movies, folk tales, and all those horrid books you were forced to read for high school. Completely serious and not funny at all.
1. and so it began

rose w/o thorns  
being a story of mirrors, quests,  
and keys to the heart

...

The Oh-So Exciting Prologue  
_In which some basic principles are explained  
in a clear and concise manner._

It is important to note that the Sohma family had an unlucky tendency of getting cursed. It was not as if they wanted to go out and have generally unhelpful, inconvenient spells cast upon them, but it just sort of happened. A lot.

Take the case of Shigure Sohma, for example. Shigure was an internationally renowned author of children's books until he bumped headfirst into Wanda, the moderately Wicked Witch of the West District, on his way home from a book-signing convention. Wanda was so upset, and because she was oh-so-moderately wicked indeed, she hexed Shigure Sohma with Writer's Block, a curse that disabled Shigure from writing anything worth mentioning. This by itself wouldn't have been so bad if, on the following day, Shigure hadn't run into Glenda, the generally Good Witch of the Northern Alliance of Pink Bubble Transportation, who was determined to alleviate Shigure's misfortune. (Glenda was a huge fan of Shigure's writing, after all.) While attempting a counter curse on Shigure with an Inspiration Spell, however, she sneezed, and Shigure ended up instead with Procrastination.

Naturally, the combination of Writer's Block and Procrastination did not bode well for Shigure's writing career, and in the middle of what was certain to be another internationally best-selling and critically acclaimed novel, Shigure Sohma and his unwritten books disappeared from the public eye. Then again, some people didn't believe that the end of Shigure Sohma's writing career had anything to do with either so-called curse and insist that Writer's Block and Procrastination were, in actuality, results of Shigure's laziness.

Cursed? Ha!

If you are one of those people who think Shigure's bad luck was really his bad vices, perhaps Hatsuharu Sohma's curse would be more believable. While visiting a good friend named Dr. Jekyll, Hatsuharu Sohma mistook a beaker of Highly Dangerous and Possibly Toxic Potion for a glass of lemon iced tea and ended up with a split personality. One personality was friendly, polite, normal Hatsuharu. The other personality was a not-so friendly or polite Hatsuharu with violent tendencies.

There were critics of Hatsuharu's curse, as well. They said Hatsuharu was merely throwing a temper tantrum, and it was all because his parents allowed him to walk around with "that crazy hair and all those wild piercings. A travesty, really, what today's youths get away with. Why, we never would have allowed such nonsense when _I_ was a child [blah blah blah…] "

Cursed? Double ha!

(Ha ha.)

Curses came in all shapes, sizes, trends and fashions in the Sohma family, and almost all of them could be explained away as personality quirks. Almost all. There was one in particular that wasn't so easily explained.

* * *

CHAPTER 1  
_In which Hana has the unexpected pleasure of meeting a runaway piano  
and we are briefly introduced to members of the Sohma family__._

It all started one sunny and generally idle Tuesday when Saki Hanajima stepped out of her apartment at five minutes to noon instead of precisely on the hour. If Hana had left exactly on time instead of five minutes early, she wouldn't have put herself directly in the raging warpath of the runaway piano. Really, the following story can be partially, if not entirely, blamed on one Saki Hanajima and her lack of punctuality.

You see, Hana lived halfway up (or halfway down, depending on whether you yourself were going up or down at the time) of a very tall, very steep hill. At the top of the hill (which was always at the top no matter from which direction you came; unless, of course, it was Friday, which it was not, because it was Tuesday, as mentioned above), there lived a little old lady who used to be a world-famous musician and, for sentimentality's sake, wanted to move a piano into her house. Because of the new floor she had installed downstairs for her Thursday yoga classes, and because of the very narrow and somewhat rickety stairway, the little old lady employed the help of a local moving company to lift the piano through a series of pulley systems to the second floor and in through the large second-story window.

It was a good plan in theory, but in reality, it wasn't. The movers managed to lift the piano all of two inches when the ropes snapped and dropped the piano back onto the sidewalk. Then, rather slowly at first, the piano began to drift listlessly downhill while everyone argued about the best kinds of knots to use when tying ropes around pianos. By the time anyone noticed what was happening with the piano, it had already gained so much momentum that no one could really do anything but watch the piano roll downhill and hope that it would stop at the bottom.

Yes, if Hana had left five minutes later, none of what is to come in the following chapters would have happened. As it were, however, Hana happened out the door to her apartment right as the piano began rumbling down the hill in a dangerously fast and loud manner, playing dissonant chords as it jitter-jumped over cracks in the sidewalk.

"Watch out!" one of the movers frantically cried from the top of the hill.

Hanajima glanced up in the direction of the voice and took in the following information:

1. Piano.  
2. Sidewalk.  
3. Mud puddle.

In the next instant, Hana had neatly sidestepped the runaway piano and landed herself into a large mud puddle to the left of the sidewalk. Consequently, Hana and the hem of her dress were soaked in mud, and because of this, Hana went back inside to wash her ankles and change into something clean. As a result, Hana ended up leaving her apartment at 12:17.

Note: As for the piano, it continued to travel downhill, but it did not stop at the bottom like the movers had hoped. Instead, it continued travelling West for another few days until it was captured by a group of rogue piano rustlers. The piano eventually escaped with the help of a friendly bass clarinet, and after several improbable musical adventures, they found their way back together to Enchanted Hill and the house of the little old lady, where they all lived happily ever after the end.

Because Hana left at 12:17, she missed the magical pumpkin that would take her over the river and through the wood to her grandmother's house. Because she missed the last magical pumpkin, Hana had to walk instead. Because she had to walk, Hana decided to take a shortcut through the Relatively Dark Forest. Because she took the shortcut… well…

Because this is the abridged version, suffice to say a lot of… odd events occurred, and Hana was none too happy by the time she entered the large gate that led to a large rose garden and a sort of largish Japanese-styled house. When Hanajima passed the garden and finally reached the Japanese-styled house, she knocked, wary that another odd event could be formulating right then. Fortunately for her, a harmless-looking, yukata-wearing man opened the door instead.

Hana, who had been raised to be polite and show good manners, bowed.

"I'm sorry to intrude," Hana began. "But I--"

"Ah! What would such a young and lovely flower such as yourself be doing out here in the middle of the mysterious and frightening Relatively Dark Forest?" Shigure Sohma asked, bowing politely as well. As you may have guessed, Hana didn't know this was Shigure Sohma, famous author extraordinaire, but there he was.

In any case, Hana continued talking as if she hadn't been interrupted.

"—took a wrong turn, and believe I am lost," Hanajima finished coolly, straightening up.

There was, after this statement, a brief silence in which a cool breeze swept across the area, causing the hem of Hana's dress and cloak to billow out around her.

"Y-yes! It's very easy to get lost in this wood," Shigure said knowingly, waving a hand in the air to indicate "this wood."

"I suppose I should escort you back to civilization," he continued with a Handsome Smile. "I couldn't let a young lady travel alone, after all. The woods can be dangerous, and you may need someone to protect you."

"That won't be necessary," Hana replied.

There was, again, another brief pause in the conversation. Apparently ignorant to the awkward silence, Hana absently glanced about herself with mild curiosity as Shigure continued to stand, rather more stiffly than before, in the doorway.

"Well," Shigure rallied after clearing his throat, "I could just give you directions, if you wanted, although --"

"That would be…" Hana interrupted, then paused as if searching for the right word, her eyes drifting back up to Shigure.

"… nice," she finished.

Wow. Her eyes were really…

Shigure opened his mouth in reply, but whatever he was about to say was lost in the general _whump_-ing sound of a large, heavy-looking book hitting his face.

To be clear, it wasn't Hanajima who hit Shigure with the book. She wasn't the sort of person who went around hitting strangers with books, and even if she were, Hana didn't have one handy at the moment since she just finished reading a series called _Fruits Basket_ (which I highly recommend you read, too) that very morning and was, therefore, currently bookless.

No, the person who smacked Shigure with a large, heavy-looking book was a boy name Yuki. Yuki was, like Shigure, a Sohma. He had a few curses placed on him, as well, but that wasn't important at the moment. At the moment, it was only important that he had suddenly appeared in the doorway beside Shigure and hit him with the above-mentioned book.

"I'm sorry," Yuki said to Hana and not to Shigure, whom he had hit and not her. "My cousin wasn't bothering you, I hope?"

"Not at all," Hana replied evenly. "I simply needed directions."

"And I wath juthd aboud do gib dem do her," Shigure said as he rubbed his nose where Yuki had earlier smacked it rather hard. In a more coherent fashion, he added with injured dignity, "Really, Yuki, you always assume I'm doing something bad."

"That's because you always are," Yuki said acidly. Then, turning his attention back to Hana, Yuki said in a much more pleasant voice: "Where are you headed?"

"To my grandmother's house, who is mysteriously ill," Hana replied. She held up a picnic basket no one had apparently noticed until now and added, "... I'm to deliver bread and wine, you see?"

It was very odd, considering it was the beginning of summer, but another cool gust of wind blew through yet again, causing the roses in the garden to nod up and down and a few scattered leaves to swell up into the atmosphere behind Hana.

"Yes, we see," Yuki and Shigure quickly agreed simultaneously.

"You're not very lost. Just go back the way you came," Yuki continued quickly, knowing that most grandmothers lived over the river and through the wood from the city, "Until you hit Yellow Brick Road. Turn left, then take the second path to the right and go straight on till evening. You should get there before dark."

Behind Hana, the wind died down, and leaves settled themselves back on the ground. Nonetheless, a brisk chill remained in the air. Yuki absently rubbed his bare arms and wondered if it would rain soon.

"Are you sure you wouldn't want anyone to go with you?" Shigure asked. "There are all sorts of strange things in the forest."

"I'm sure I won't meet anything stranger than you," Hana replied politely.

Reluctantly, Yuki agreed with Shigure.

"It would be safer…" he began, but he trailed off as Hanajima merely looked at him for a long moment.

"I wouldn't worry if I were you," she finally said. "Thank you for your trouble..."

She bowed, and the two men did the same. Without another word, Hana turned, her cloak swirling around her in a nicely dramatic fashion as she headed toward the gate.

Ah, but if Hana had only left five minutes before! If she had left five minutes earlier, she wouldn't have run into Kyo.

...

Moral of today's story: Be punctual.

Author's Notes

1. Listen and repeat: I do believe in fanfiction authors who finish their stories. I do, I do!  
2. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first and second incomplete drafts of this story. Your input and comments were encouraging, helpful, and inspiring. Ready for round three?


	2. on giving advice

CHAPTER 2  
_In which arguments are made, conversation fails,  
and a good umbrella is hard to find__._

Kyo, like Shigure and Yuki, was also a Sohma. It was a very large family.

Up until this part of the story, Kyo had been training on the Mountain of the Morning fighting lions, tigers, and the occasional wayward bear. With this training, Kyo could now chop trees in half, meditate under freezing waterfalls, dance the Texas Two-Step without tripping over his own feet, and give you a mean look that essentially said, "What are YOU lookin' at, buster?"

A few days ago, Kyo's martial arts master had to leave the dojo in order to save the world (again). Before he left, however, Master Kazuma suggested that Kyo should embark on a quest for spiritual enlightenment during the duration of his absence. Looking back on it, Kazuma probably should have set better guidelines for this quest other than "have fun." "Have fun" was a very general statement and could be interpreted in many different ways, such as, oh... for example: _Have fun _goingdown the Mountain of the Morning to pick a fight with your cousin, Yuki.

And that was exactly what Kyo planned on doing.

So, just as Hana was about to meander off into the general direction of away, Kyo burst in through the gate entrance with a loud _BANG! _Kyo was a little… how to put it delicately… a little _obsessed_ in his dislike for Yuki, so as he advanced righteously towards the house, not even bothering to stop and smell the roses on life's path, he didn't even notice that he was quite in the way of Hana's attempt to leave. In fact, Kyo stopped directly in front of Hana and glared at Yuki over her head without being any the wiser to her presence.

Because Kyo caused such a ruckus with his theatrical and _loud_ entrance, everybody noticed _him_, however. Yuki, who was still standing in the doorway of the house, frowned. Shigure, at this point, felt that the doorway was getting a mite crowded, and because he was slightly suspicious of a spontaneous martial arts battle involving pain and cool kicks but mostly pain, Shigure discreetly rearranged himself out of the way.

"Not _you_ again," Yuki muttered.

"I guess I should be grateful that the great and wonderful Prince Yuki remembers me," Kyo replied, baring a row of very sharp white teeth.

"Only if you want to be remembered as a bumbling idiot who can't string two words of sense together," Yuki said.

Kyo's hands balled into fists at his sides. Hana, sensing the possibility of a spontaneous martial arts battle involving cool kicks and pain but mostly cool kicks, had relocated herself to a better vantage point, which just so happened to be next to Shigure. The pair watched Yuki and Kyo exchange insults, turning their heads from one to the other depending on who was speaking at the time.

"Get down here so I can fight you!" Kyo demanded from where he stood in the garden.

"Why?" Yuki asked, crossing his arms and leaning a shoulder into the doorframe. He smiled a thin, sarcastic smile. "Do you actually plan on winning this time? Do tell."

Kyo growled at that, sounding very similar to either a distressed cat or a hit-and-run incident involving a hapless trumpet and a tricycle.

"Of course I'll defeat you this time!" he said, "And when I do, I'll finally be able to claim my rightful place in this family!"

Yuki's expression went cold.

"You are such an idiot."

"Shut up!" Kyo exploded. He brought his fists up, elbows bent, one foot sliding forward. "Are you going to stand up there insulting me or are you going to fight me?"

"No," Yuki said curtly.

Kyo opened his mouth, then shut it, and then opened it again.

"No, what?" Kyo asked finally.

"I'm not going to stand here anymore, and I'm not going to fight you," Yuki said sharply, uncrossing his arms and pushing himself off the doorframe. "I'm going inside."

And Yuki did just that. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked inside the house, sliding the door quietly shut behind him. There was a brief pause in which Kyo just sort of stared.

"H-hey!" Kyo shouted after he recollected his bearings. " You can't just walk away like that, you coward!"

His words were greeted by silence, however. Kyo stalked up to the front door and glared at it as if it were all its fault, which was really unfair since it obviously wasn't, the poor door.

"Yuki!" Kyo shouted at the door, "I'll break your girly face if you don't get back here NOW!"

Which, given that Kyo would probably attempt to break Yuki's face if he _did_ show up, wasn't much of an incentive.

More silence, though this seemed more deliberate than the first silence.

"Darn it!"

Kyo, in an impressive display of frustration, slammed his fist against the wall of the house. At least, that was his intention. The problem with largish ancient-looking Japanese-styled houses is that the walls are made of rice paper, so Kyo's fist slammed through the wall rather than against it.

Shigure winced from the sidelines.

"Kyo, didn't you do that the last time you were here?" he asked in a pained voice.

"It's not my fault you built you're stupid house out of paper," Kyo snapped.

"Well," Shigure began conversationally, "It was originally straw, but there was this wolf who was apparently allergic and…"

"Rain," Hana interrupted abruptly.

And lo, there was yet another moment of silence.

Kyo and Shigure both turned, confused, and looked at Hana.

"Beg pardon?" Shigure asked at the exact moment Kyo said, "Who the heck is that?"

Ignoring Kyo's less-that-friendly question, Hana pointed up to the sky.

"Rain," she said again. "It's raining."

Two pairs of eyes blinked.

"I'm getting wet."

Blink blink?

Shigure was the first to understand what Hana was getting at. Kyo was suddenly pushed unceremoniously to the side as Shigure dashed over to throw the door open and indicate the entrance hall with a hand.

"It's raining, young lady. You should come inside until the storm is over."

"What storm?" Kyo asked. "It's barely a drizzle."

"If you don't mind," Hana suggested tonelessly, "I'd like to borrow an umbrella. I don't want to impede on your time any longer."

Never mind that she could've left sooner, but hey! A show's a show.

"Of course, of course!" Shigure said, smiling like a muppet. "Kyo, would you go and fetch the young lady an umbrella?"

"What? Me? I don't live here—you get it!"

"Ah, to deny a favor of a lady is truly despicable, Kyo. How can you call yourself a man?"

"You've got to be kidding me," Kyo grumbled. Despite this, however, he grudgingly stepped through the opened door in a quest for an umbrella. When Kyo disappeared into the hallway, Shigure abruptly turned to Hana.

"You will come back to return it, won't you?" Shigure asked excitedly.

As Shigure attempted chitchattery with Hana outside, Kyo wandered inside looking for an umbrella. He really had no idea where to start, and for some reason or another, he didn't even think about checking the umbrella rack that was right next to the door. Unable to find anything downstairs, he stomped upstairs where Shigure and Yuki's respective rooms were located. Since Kyo was unable to find Yuki downstairs either, it was probably safe to assume that Yuki was upstairs, as well.

Meanwhile, at the front of the house, Shigure and Hana stood side-by-side under the eave of the house.

"That's a nice cloak you have," Shigure began.

"Thank you," Hana replied.

Pause.

"Where'd you get it?"

"My grandmother helped me make it."

"Oh, you made it?"

"Yes."

Pause.

"And it's red. Red's a nice color."

"I prefer black."

Pause.

"I see."

Back inside the house, Kyo gave up trying to find the umbrella and instead grabbed a book from Shigure's room which, judging by the amount of dust that had gathered on it, Shigure wouldn't miss. Kyo figured that Hana could hold it over her head to block the rain. Feeling clever, he headed out of the room and into the hallway. He opened the door to the stairwell, only it was the wrong door, and Kyo instead walked into the room where Yuki was waiting.

...

Moral of today's story: "Have fun" is a very general term and should be accompanied  
with other guidelines, such as: "but don't go looking for trouble."


	3. on treating guests

CHAPTER 3  
_In which two play cat and mouse, __  
__a book cannot defy the laws of physics,  
and sparks fly._

_Welcome to another exciting episode of Rose W/O Thorns. Today, we join the red-headed Sohma as he abandons his hunt for his prey, the elusive umbrella, in the exotic country of Fafaraway. His search concludes instead with the successful capture of a dusty book. On the way back to share his catch of the day with his pride, however, the red-headed Sohma takes a wrong turn._

"What are you doing?" Yuki asked irritably, looking over his shoulder at Kyo as the boy in question walked into his room. Yuki himself had been sitting by the window while reading the same book, incidentally, he had earlier smacked Shigure's face with.

_The red-headed Sohma has accidentally trespassed on the territory of the silver-haired Sohma. Note how the silver-haired Sohma bristles and gives a warning growl. This will either warn the red-headed Sohma off or initiate the beginning of a fight._

"What's it to you?" Kyo snapped back, waving his own book, which really belonged to Shigure, in Yuki's general direction. This produced a cloud of dust, which caused both young men to start coughing.

_The red head, obviously unprepared for this unexpected encounter, raises a defensive dust cloud. The two will exchange vocal warnings as they size each other up._

Yuki narrowed his eyes despite still coughing.

"You're (cough) in my room. Get (cough) out."

"I was (cough cough) just in (cough) just in here to (cough) _just in here to_ find a stupid umbrella."

"There isn't one. Get out."

_See how the red head's face changes color to match his hair? By using the crimsonometer, we can accurately guess the anger levels the red head is displaying._

"Then where is it, or is the great Yuki too high and mighty to answer?" Kyo asked, shaking the book at Yuki again, which was really unfortunate because it only caused another cloud of dust just when the first one had finally settled. The argument was put on hold for awhile as Yuki coughed and fanned the air with a hand and Kyo just sneezed rather impressively.

"You'd think it would be in the umbrella rack by the door," Yuki finally continued after a moment. He stood and faced Kyo squarely. "But I suppose the strain of thinking would be too much for someone like you."

_According to the crimsonmeter, the red head is definitely Not Happy…_

"Shut up!" Kyo barked.

"Why don't you take your own advice?"

… _and is getting Not Happier by the Moment__._

"I said shut up!"

"You're not getting any points for repetition."

_As verbal warnings continue without either side backing down, it becomes apparent that the territorial dispute will end in a display of physical prowess__._

"Oh, that's it! You're de... ah... you... ah... _ACHOO!!_"

"Bless you."

"Thank you. No, wait! I mean: You're dead!"

And with that, Kyo launched himself towards Yuki… while Yuki merely stepped to the side. As Kyo flew by, carried by his own momentum, Yuki slammed his elbow into Kyo's back and neatly flipped Kyo head over heels (or, more precisely, heels over head). Normally, this would have knocked Kyo onto his back on the floor, but Yuki had been standing awfully close to the window…

Meanwhile, at the front of the house, a mysterious shadow passed over the heads of Hana and Shigure. Both looked up.

"Is it a bird?" Shigure asked. "A plane?"

"No, it's –"

Kyo crash-landed in front of the odd pair. Amazingly, he survived with only a bruised ego and muddy clothes. His face was beet red, too, though it was difficult to tell if this were from embarrassment or anger or a potent combination of both. And he was soaked, because it was still raining.

"Drat," Kyo muttered to himself as he pushed himself up with a scowl.

"My cloak," Hana said in reply.

A chill thrilled up Kyo's spine when he heard that. Slowly, he surreptitiously turned his head towards Hana and found that, not only had he gotten himself covered in mud, but he had also managed to splash some on her.

Even though he could still feel his face glowing red, Kyo jumped to his feet, ready to initiate another fight. It was all Yuki's fault, after all.

"That's the second time today," Hana said to no one in particular, remembering the earlier incident of the runaway piano.

"Kyo, you should be more careful," Shigure scolded lightly, tucking his hands into the sleeves of his yukata.

"It's her own fault for standing in the way!" Kyo exploded.

"_My fault?"_

Wow, that was scary, how she said that. There were bright white sparks and pinwheels spinning over her head, too. Both Shigure and Kyo took an instinctive step away, both deciding that those sparks and pinwheels probably weren't the best things for a healthy lifestyle.

"Don't talk to her like that," Yuki commanded cooly from what light doth yonder window break of the second story. Yuki could be kind of scary, too, when he was angry, and he was definitely angry right then. "You should apologize."

"Me?" Kyo cried out indignantly, pointing an accusing finger up at Yuki. "You're the one who threw me out the window in the first place! It's your fault"

"You're the one who stupidly broke into my room."

"You shouldn't have made your door look like it went downstairs!"

"Out, darned spot. Out I say," Hana murmured to herself as she vainly tried to brush the mud off her cloak.

"The stairway doesn't have a door, idiot."

"You think you're so smart, but – "

The argument could have continued endlessly, but then physics kicked in. Remember the book Kyo found in Shigure's room? Remember the bright white sparks and pinwheels spinning over Hana's head?

Well, when Kyo attacked Yuki upstairs, he did so with a book in his hand. When he landed on the ground, however, the book was nowhere to be seen. Why? Because when Kyo was thrown out the window, he let go of the book, and it had been flung high up into the sky. Gravity, as gravity will do, pulled it back down to earth and, fortune be fickle, it landed directly on top of Hana's head.

Hana, feeling frustrated at the lack of sympathy she was receiving, as well as feeling soggy, soiled and soaked with rain and mud, couldn't help but vent some of her emotions through sparks and pinwheels created by her mad magical electric power.

Hana has mad magical electric powers, by the way.

When the book hit her head, Hana temporarily lost control of her power, and it went haywire. For about two seconds, there was nothing but a great flash of white light. Then, there was only Hanajima standing in the rain-soaked rose garden.

"Excuse me?" Hana called, glancing around.

Rain pitter-pattered around her, but there was no answer.

"Kyo?" she requested, using the names she had earlier overheard the Sohmas use. "Yuki? Shigure?"

More silence. Not deliberate, but there it was.

Well, wasn't that odd?

Hana was about to leave when her foot hit something on the ground. She paused and looked down to find a book lying in the mud. Hana picked the book up and cleaned the mud off with her already soiled cloak._ Chicken Soup for the Person Who Tends to Get Cursed a Lot's Soul_ was clearly written on the cover.

Looked interesting, Hana thought.

With one last glance around, Hana left the mysterious rose garden on her merry way to her grandmother's house, swinging the basket of bread and wine at her side as she went.

---

A few hours later, in a different part of the country called Fafaraway, Hatori Sohma was in the process of closing his office for the night when a post owl landed on his windowsill with a letter tied to its leg. It was an odd letter, considering that the handwriting was very poor and it was addressed from Yuki Sohma, who normally had extraordinarily neat penmanship. But Hatori often received odd letters such as these. He was, after all, a doctor, and when a person was ill, that person didn't usually write very neat letters.

Dear Hatori,  
Please come to Shigure's house at your earliest convenience.  
Signed,  
Yuki  
(pawprint)  
(scratch)

All the same, even when Yuki was ill, his penmanship was still peculiarly neat. Even before Hatori set out to find Shigure's house, he had a pretty good idea that something odd had happened. Something that had to do with the Sohma's curse of tending to be cursed. A lot.

"What'd the letter say?" Momiji asked as Hatori finished reading. Momiji was yet another Sohma (it was a very large family!), and even though he was Hatori's cousin (or second-cousin twice-removed), Momiji lived with Hatori. On days he didn't have school, like today, Momiji would usually spend time in Hatori's office and either help with paperwork or play the violin in the waiting room. In either case, he kept Hatori company.

Currently, Momiji was sitting on Hatori's desk, legs swinging off the side. Hatori was standing next to the window on the opposite wall where the post owl was patiently waiting for his cookie on the windowsill.

Note: It is standard custom in Fafaraway to tip a delivery owl with a cookie. Unlike mice, they do not ask for a glass of milk, and if they _did_, they would certainly not ask for a straw.

The rest of the office was free of people and/or owls, though there were the several standard office plants settled on the bookcase. There were also two chairs situated in front of the desk for guests, and a mirror placed right across the window. All in all, a very professional-looking office. The only unprofessional touch, it seemed, was the Halliana vine beginning to take over the top three shelves of the bookcase, and the photograph of a young woman hiding within the leaves of the Halliana vine.

One might wonder who this young woman was, but if one asked, one would be subject to a somewhat icy and reproachful look from the doctor; and as the doctor would be the person in charge of one's general health and well-being, one would quickly resign one's wondering and give a hasty apology.

"It's a letter from Yuki," Hatori said, handing said letter over to Momiji. "I believe he's ill."

Momiji scanned the letter quickly and looked up at Hatori.

"Can I come and visit, too?" he asked hopefully.

"If you'd like," Hatori replied, sitting down at his desk.

"Hooray!" cried Momiji, jumping off the above-mentioned desk. "I can't wait!"

"We're not going tonight," Hatori said in what might've been a tired voice (but of course it wasn't tired, because doctors and especially Hatori never got tired), while Momiji half-ran, half-danced across the room to the door.

...

Moral of today's story: Be nice to your guests,  
especially if they have mad magical powers.


	4. on the subject of flying

Figure I  
The following excerpt is from_ Wishful Thinking: The Standard Guide to Becoming a Fairy Godparent._

"A Fairy Godparent can do more than turn a pumpkin into a carriage. In her career, a Fairy Godparent will likely be called upon to help a patient break a **curse**. Contrary to popular belief, curses are actually very easy to break—that is, they are easy to break if one knows the right way to go about it. In this lesson, you will learn just how curses work and how to counteract them with their **counter curse**." (pg. 42)

"DO NOT try to reverse the curse by giving the patient a **blessing**! Though there have been some cases where a blessing has successfully counter-effected the curse, there have been many more cases where the blessing has, in fact, made it worse.

"In Lesson I: Basic Safety Precautions, you learned that mixing magic can be highly dangerous. You have probably seen a movie or TV show in which two characters attack each other with magic at the same time, and where the two magics meet, there is a resulting explosion. Now imagine that happening to your patient.

"Explosions between two magics are very rare, but it's better not to risk it. Remember to only use blessings to cure curses only when it is approved by the **Magical Usage Conduct Committee** (MUCC). We will study this further in Lesson VIII [...]" (pgs. 43-44)

---

Onto the show!

CHAPTER 4  
_In which a copious amount of notes are exchanged, a broom takes a nap,  
and Uotani meets a disagreeable cat._

Hana didn't much care for another misadventure through the Relatively Dark Forest, so after spending the night at her grandmother's house, she sent a letter to her friend, Arisa Uotani, via owl. The letter read as such:

"Midway on our life's journey, I found myself lost in the dark wood, the right road lost. I'd rather not travel through the wood again so soon, and since Magical Pumpkin #12 isn't in service today, could you pick me up at my grandmother's house this evening? If you follow Yellow Brick Road and don't take any advice from strange wolves, you won't get lost. Please send a response with Errol."

Note (Author's note, not Hana's note): Due to scenery cuts in the abridged version of Hanajima's Mad Crazy Adventure through the Relatively Dark Forest, the part about the wolves was not explained. Sparklenotes, however, states that Hana first turned off the right road when she got advice from a wolf who gave very bad directions. Sparklenotes also suggests that the wolf was somehow allegorical to political problems during the time the conversation was written.

Errol the post owl, who sat patiently while Uo read, enjoyed several adoring pats on the head before Uo walked around her room a bit in search of something with which to write. It was very early in the morning, and Uo was still in her pajamas. After she eventually found a feather quill under her bed, Uo wrote a quick reply:

"No problem. See you in a few hours."

Uo signed her name at the bottom with an elaborate flourish before walking back to the window and tying the letter to Errol's leg.

"Be nice to Hana's grandmother," Uo advised in a conspiratorial manner. "She makes darn good cookies, but only to polite owls. Now fly, fly!"

Errol hooted twice and took off; Uo closed the window behind him.

Now, instead of going into detail of how Uo spent her morning, there will be a short note to the reader that the reader may read that reads as follows:

_In the interest in saving more time than necessary as well as building a certain amount of suspense and mystery, the suspenseful disappearance of Yuki, Shigure, and Kyo Sohma will remain a mystery and not be explained quite yet._

The morning passed quickly, and after lunch, Uo finally got around to writing her column for_ The Daily Prophet_. Uo was something of a celebrity, having traveled to many parts of the world, so her columns were very popular.

At the same moment the clock tolled hickory dickory dock (tick tock), Uo finished writing.

"Perfect timing," Uo said aloud, snapping her feather quill on the desk with a faint _whiff!_ as she pushed back her chair and stood. She could pick up Hana and drop off her own article to the editor on her way back.

A few minutes later, Uo, carrying her writing in a folder of her work and a road map of Fafaraway, grabbed her broom from the closet and opened one of the kitchen windows.

"High ho, Sliver!" she said, straddling the broom. If something were supposed to happen, however, it didn't happen.

"To grandmother's house we go," Uo tried after a moment, but again: nothing.

"Shoot," Uo said.

"Bang!" shouted a wand from another room.

Magnanimously deciding to ignore the wand, Uo got off her broom and studied it with some consternation. Did she forget to fill it up with Dust-B-Gone, or did the bristles need to be replaced? When was the last time she checked the batteries?

Note: Unbeknownst to Uo, she was looking at an ordinary broom. Her other broom, Sliver, had fallen asleep in the back of the broom closet and was having a wonderful dream involving long walks, the beach, and the feather duster that lived next door.

Uo sighed and dropped her broom unceremoniously on the floor. Before she could get Hana, Uo would have to take a short detour down Memory Lane.

---

Fifteen minutes and four-and-a-half blocks later, Uo knocked on the second door on the second floor of the second apartment complex on Memory Lane. Hardly a minute passed when the front door was opened, revealing a comfortably small entrance hall with a young woman named Tohru standing in the middle of it. Tohru was taking classes at a local college as a fairy godmother-in-training. The tuition hadn't been terribly expensive, and Tohru had been able to save up enough money to pay for college and an apartment all on her own.

"Welcome!" said a very cheerful Tohru. "It's good to see you again, Uo. Please come in!"

"Thanks, Tohru. It's great to see you, too!" Uo said, smiling just as brightly and as goofily as Tohru was at that moment. She briefly explained her purpose of coming over, and Tohru readily agreed to help.

"I heard that Hana's grandmother was ill," Tohru continued after she finally remembered to invite Uo inside. Once they were both together, Tohru shut the door behind Uo.

"Oh, no, the grandmother's fine. It's the house that was feeling sick," said Uo.

"Oh, poor thing!" Tohru cried. "What was it? Creaky steps? A broken window?"

"I'm not sure, but I'll ask when I get there."

As they were talking, Tohru took out a set of keys that she had been wearing around her neck and under her shirt. After pulling the chain over her head, she selected a long, skeletal-looking key and put it in the lock, twisted the key, and reopened the front door.

Uo was suddenly blinded by the outside sun, but when her eyes adjusted, she realized that this wasn't the way out to Memory Lane. Instead, she was greeted by a beautiful garden of rosebushes.

"Oh, wait," Tohru said bashfully. "This is to the Labyrinth."

Listing off apologies, Tohru closed the door and searched through the keys again.

"I'm so forgetful. I can never remember which key goes to the broom closet. Oh! Here it is."

Tohru smiled triumphantly as she tried another key. This time, the door opened up into a closet, and she grabbed her broom, Dusty, from the back of it.

Uo stared at Tohru.

"Did you do that?" Uo asked, finally remembering to blink.

"Do what?" Tohru asked innocently, holding out Dusty for Uo to take. Uo didn't.

"That garden?" Uo said incredulously. "Did you...?"

"Oh, that!" Tohru smiled. "Yes, the Goblin King needed a temporary gardener to tend the Labyrinth for a while, and I was the only one who applied. He gave me this magical key –" Tohru held up the skeleton key "– so I could get to there every day, and this one –" she held up the key she had just used, which looked like very much like the first, but instead of a skeleton, it looked more like a knobbly stick "—so I could get to the supply closet for tools, and this one--" she held up a third key, which looked like a rose without thorns "--so I could get home.

"I think it was really nice of him," Tohru continued, her face flushed a faint color pink with bashfulness. "The Labyrinth is really very far away, and he made it so easy to get back and forth."

"The Goblin King?" Uo exclaimed, coming to her senses. "Tohru! Don't you think that was a little dangerous to trust a guy like that?"

"Oh, no. He was always very polite and kind. Well, sometimes he threatened to throw me into the Bog of Eternal Stench... but I'm sure he was only kidding. Really."

"Can't you get employed by someone, I don't know… NOT known for their bouts of insanity?" Uo continued as though she hadn't heard Tohru. "First there was that mad scientist in that remote mountain castle, then the Translvanian with the sharp teeth, and now a Goblin King!"

Tohru slumped her shoulders.

"Uh oh," Uo thought suddenly.

"I tried to get employed by someone in town," Tohru said, "but not very many people are hiring Fairy Godparents-in-training right now. "

"She's going to cry," Uo thought desperately. "I made Tohru cry. Oh no..."

Instead of crying, however, Tohru balled her hands into fists and held them up in a never-give-up! sort of attitude.

"But that's okay!" Tohru said resolutely. "I'll do my best, and I'm sure I'll get a job in no time!"

It was Uo who burst into tears for Tohru's wonderful bravery in the face of economical hardship. She hugged Tohru very close and absently used Tohru's shoulder as a handkerchief.

"That's the spirit," Uo managed after a moment, pushing Tohru away as she continued brushing away tears brusquely. Tohru beamed up a bright smile at her.

"Thank you!" Tohru said, still grinning a million-watt smile. Because Uo forgot her super-cool sunglasses at home, she was temporarily dazed and blinded.

Note: Five minutes later, Uo was still blinking away after-images.

The two women continued talking for a while longer before Uo reluctantly took her leave, but not before planning a dinner date between herself, Tohru, and, of course, Hana. As Uo took off from the ground via broom outside Tohru's apartment and into the sunny blue sky overhead, Tohru waved from the entrance mat of her door.

"Be safe!" Tohru called after her friend.

---

About the same time Uo and Tohru were saying their goodbyes, Yuki and Shigure were waiting downstairs for the doctor's arrival. Kyo was on the roof sulking.

Whenever Kyo felt all emo (which is short for emotional and should not be confused with emu, as emu is a kind of bird), namely angry, he would go to the tallest place he could find and mull over whatever it was that was troubling him. This should give the reader a pretty accurate indication of how Kyo felt when he lived at the dojo in the Mountain of the Morning for the past three years, as it was the tallest mountain in Fafaraway.

This morning, Kyo was upset about the following:

1. Kyo had been transfigured into a cat.  
He correctly assumed this had something to do with Electric Girl yesterday.  
2. Yuki had been transfigured into a mouse.  
Which normally would have made Kyo happy, or at least hysterically amused, but  
3. Yuki, despite him being a mouse, could still kick Kyo's tail, despite him being a cat.  
Kyo had tried a surprise attack this morning.

If Yuki was transfigured into a mouse and Kyo into a cat, Shigure, of course, was a dog.

The reader would be wise to remember that, in the beginning of this chapter, there was a brief excerpt from _Wishful Thinking: The Standard Guide to Becoming a Fairy Godparent_ that explained that mixing magic has consequences. When Hana released a remarkable amount of electrical magic (3.2 kilowatts, wow!), it ruptured something in the scientific make-up of the Sohmas' respective curses, causing them to mutate into something else. The Sohmas did not actually disappear, as Hana had originally thought. No, the mutated curses somehow changed their physical appearance.

Kyo, still sitting on the roof, growled to himself, which came out more as a disgruntled purring sound. Because of where he was, however, Kyo was the first to notice Hatori and Momiji walking down the garden path to the house. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Hatori walked while Momiji more-or-less bounced. Though Kyo wasn't exactly friends with either of them, he knew Hatori had a degree in Fairy Godparenting, so he jumped from the roof to a conveniently placed tree branch and, from there, to the opened window in the second story.

Kyo was at the top of the stairs when he heard the front door of the house open. He was halfway down the stairs when he heard two loud POFF sounds. He was at the bottom of the stairs when he heard Shigure's barking laughter.

"A rabbit and a sea… a sea… a seahorse!" Shigure sputtered, not really trying to prevent bursts of laughter.

"But why did you change, too?" Yuki asked in a much more practical and appropriate manner.

Kyo paused at the bottom of the steps, correctly guessing that something related to the Sohma family's curse of tending to get cursed a lot was somehow related to both the above-mentioned quotes from Shigure and Yuki, respectively.

"What's going on?" Kyo asked as he slunk into the main room with little enthusiasm. Instead of finding Hatori and Momiji standing with Shigure and Yuki, Kyo noticed two new animals.

"What happened?" the rabbit echoed in Momiji's voice.

"It seems," said Hatori calmly as he flopped on the main room floor, "that the curse wasn't placed specifically on you three, but on the house."

"Oh," said Yuki and Momiji in unison. Yuki appeared to think on this a moment while Momiji studied his new rabbit feet and fluffy white tail.

Note: Yes, he _was_ adorable.

Shigure continued to contain his laughter rather poorly, and Hatori continued to flop on the floor.

"Well, that's good, right? To break the curse, all we have to do is leave," Kyo said. He was the only character, for once, who didn't look ridiculously cute and silly at the same time, as he was merely sitting. Oh wait. He was a talking cat. Never mind.

"But if we leave the house," Yuki said, still apparently thinking to himself, "Where are we supposed to go?"

Although Yuki had asked this in a matter-of-fact manner, Kyo turned on him, suddenly angry. Or angrier than usual. His face was bright red, but this was hardly noticeable since Kyo was a cat and had pleasantly fluffy orange fur that hid any reddening of Absolute Rage!!

"Whaddya mean, 'where?' " Kyo snapped. "You can always go to the main house!"

Just as abruptly, Yuki's face flushed red too, but this was likewise hardly noticeable since he was a mouse and had a silky layer of silver-colored fur. What was noticeable and a little bit scary, though, was the icy glint in Yuki's eyes.

"You don't know anything," he said in a cold, steely voice. Kyo took a step back unconsciously, but bared his teeth.

"All I know," he hissed, "is when I defeat you, I'll finally be able to claim my rightful place in the family."

"This again?"

"You're really starting to tick me off."

"Funny, because I've found you irritating for the longest time."

"Why you – "

A fight would have started at that moment if it hadn't interrupted by Shigure.

"A seahorse!" Shigure almost howled, unable to contain his laughter any longer. "Of all animals… a seahorse!"

"You're not helping," Yuki said darkly, and though his face still radiated heat, he turned his cold glare away from Kyo and directed it to Shigure, who, as expected, mostly ignored it.

Hatori decided to steer the conversation back to its original point.

"There's no point in leaving the house," he said. "I don't think it will do any good now that you've already been cursed."

Kyo, still puffed up with anger and without an explanation, stalked out of the room with a swish of his tail. There was a brief moment of silence that was broken by Momiji.

"Are you okay, Hatori?" he asked. "You don't need any water, do you?"

"No, I'm fine," Hatori replied, secretly glad that someone finally noticed he was a fish out of water. "I'm afraid, though," he added, "That I will need to report this to Akito."

Yuki nodded stiffly, his eyes drifting down to the floor.

"Yes, of course," he said distantly. "He is the head of the family, after all."

And without a backward glance or an explanation, Yuki turned and wandered off in the same direction Kyo had taken earlier in the conversation.

For a moment, Momiji quietly looked at the empty space where Kyo and Yuki had been, and Shigure and Hatori looked at Momiji looking at the empty space.

"Momiji?" Shigure asked kindly. "Would you mind looking for Kyo? He is a bit of an idiot when it comes to survival instincts, and knowing him," he continued with a note of melodrama, "he might try to pick a fight with a bear or who knows what else."

Momiji, eyes wide in the picture definition of gullible, nodded.

"But if you can't find him right away," Hatori added, "come back here."

"Okay!" Momiji said, giving a smart salute before scampering off out into the afternoon.

---

Elsewhere, Uo was muttering a sting of K-rated obscenities as she hovered over the Yellow Brick Road on her broom. She was hopelessly lost in the same Relatively Dark Forest that Hana had been lost in the previous day, and she was just now realizing that she'd been holding the map upside-down.

Letting gravity have its way, Uo gently alighted on the ground and used the broom as something to lean against as she studied the map. Well, she had passed Dreary Lane a few miles back, so that would mean she was right about... here!

"Here" was right back at the mouth of the Relatively Dark Forest again.

Uo's left eyebrow twitched once before she threw down the map in frustration and kicked it. Since it was paper, though, it didn't go very far, so instead, Uo kicked at a rock that just happened to be sitting idly in the middle of the road right where she was.

Note: Yellow Brick Road was a misleading name, considering it was not made out of yellow bricks. The Yellow Brick Road was actually more of a beaten trail, really. Fafaraway was notoriously bad at keeping the trails maintained within forests of the dim to dark category. And so, naturally, one would expect to find several rocks mixed in with the dirt on Yellow Brick Road.

Uo felt highly satisfied as the rock was sent flying into a bush at her left.

"Ouch!" cried the bush.

Uo jumped.

"Who's there?" she called.

When no one answered, Uo shrugged and picked up another small rock that also just happened to sit conveniently close to her foot and chucked it into the bushes.

"Ow!" cried the same voice. "Knock it off already! That hurts!"

"Are you going to answer me or do I have to throw another rock at you?" Uo asked, already arming herself again.

"All right, all right, all right, I'm coming out."

Uo crossed her arms, rock still in hand. Dang straight he was coming out.

A fluffy orange cat poked his head out from the branches of the bush and stared menacingly at Uo. He would probably even be a cute fluffy orange cat if he weren't scowling so much. This was, as the reader may have guessed already, Kyo Sohma, but, as the reader may have also assumed, Uo didn't know that. The little wheels in Kyo's head were turning and trying to come up with a good insult, and it was taking longer than usual because he had just been hit twice in the head by rocks.

"You look like a dweeb," he came up with finally, waving his paw at Uo's blue dress and white pinafore. Not the best insult in the world, but it would do.

"Ouch, that hurt," said Uo sarcastically. She wasn't surprised that the cat could talk. She had traveled to many places – Discworld, Disney World, Abarat, etc. – and had met creatures stranger than talking orange cats.

"Shut up, Blondie."

"You want me to throw another rock at you, Carrots?"

"Pfft. You couldn't hit the broadside of a barn if you—owch!"

Note: I do not commend throwing rocks of any size at animals and especially cats. Uo is a trained rock-chucker, so she knows what she's doing.

Uo, after throwing her last rock, paused for a moment, for she had come to a point where most fairy tale characters came to. She now had to decide if she should ask advice from a helpful forest creature, or ignore him and take the chance that something weird would happen.

But, Uo reasoned with herself, he certainly wasn't acting very helpful. And Hana had said not to take advice from any wolves, either. Should that apply to house cats, too? Sure, wolves and house cats weren't anything alike, but maybe the moral of the story was don't trust strange animals that talk. Plus, this animal could be a political/social/cultural metaphor, and Uo certainly didn't want to get mixed into any of that. How dull!

"Hey, Carrots," Uo said, breaking her own reverie. "Do you know the way to grandmother's house?"

"Grandmother's house? Why the heck are you asking me?"

"Forest animals are supposed to know things like that."

"I'm a house cat! House cats aren't forest animals!"

"Fine," Uo said irritably, flipping her hair over her shoulder and mounting on her broom. "Forget it." She had just lifted up in the air enough so only her toes brushed the ground when--

"Hey!" the cat called.

"What?" Uo asked as she lifted off the ground completely.

"Two roads diverge in the woods and you, you don't take the one less traveled by, because that will make all the difference and you'll get lost," the cat said hurriedly and in one breath.

Uo chuckled. "Ha, you can't trick me, Carrots," she said triumphantly.

"Trick you? Why would I trick you?" spat the cat.

"I know better than to trust a talking animal. I'm taking the road less traveled."

"Like heck you are!"

"Oh yeah? Who's going to stop me?"

"No, really, it's a stupid idea!"

"Sayonara, Carrots," Uo called, waving as she zipped down Yellow Brick but-actually-rocks-and-dirt Road, taking a left at the road less traveled. Unfortunately, the moment she turned left, she rammed into a rather stiff tree branch and was promptly knocked off her broom.

…:…

Some time later, Uo's eyelashes fluttered, then parted as she gained consciousness.

Little cartoon birds and stars and angry orange cats were spinning around her head. Where'd they come from, and who did they think they were?

Not bothering to come up with an answer, Uo batted the apparitions away impatiently and sat up, taking note of where she was as well as spitting out three leaves that had somehow managed to get into her mouth. She was distracted, however, by a little fuzzy rabbit hurrying past her on the road. The rabbit took a pocket watch from... well, his fur, Uo guessed, and glanced at it.

"I'm late!" the rabbit exclaimed, jumping two or so feet in the air and landing back on the road with a puff of dust. "I'm late! For a very important date!"

The rabbit took a few hurried steps, then paused.

"Late and date," the rabbit said in a musing kind of voice. He clapped his paws together.

"Hey! That rhymed!" he said happily.

"Hey! Mr. Rabbit!" Uo called, getting to her feet woozily. Wow... the world was spinning...

The rabbit jumped again and looked over his shoulder at Uo, blinking his large eyes. Apparently, he hadn't noticed Uo lying down unconscious in the middle of the road.

"Oh, sorry," the rabbit said again. "There's no time to say hello. Good-bye! I'm late!"

And with that, he gave a cheery wave goodbye before scampering down the road.

"Hey! I just need to ask you a question!" Uo exclaimed, running after him. She had figured that the moral of the story was not "don't take advice from talking animals" since ignoring the cat had gotten her attacked by a tree branch. Maybe this rabbit could give her some advice, like where she could find a phone to call Hana and tell her she'd be late.

"Sorry, but if I stop, I'll be even later!" the rabbit sang remorsefully. "I'm overdue. I'm in a rabbit stew!"

And with that, and another "hey, that also rhymes!", the rabbit dove into the dense brush of the forest and disappeared.

"What the--" Uo muttered, slowing down to inspect said dense brush the rabbit had just jumped into. Kneeling down and pushing the branches aside, Uo discovered a rabbit hole dug into the slope of a hill.

A rather large rabbit hole, Uo amended as she crawled inside past the branches on her hands and knees. In fact, it didn't seem much like a rabbit hole at all, considering she could fit inside. It was more like a wolf's den, or a lion's den, only lions didn't live on this side of the tracks, so it couldn't belong to a lion. Lions didn't live in forests, anyway, did they? She'd have to ask someone when she got--

And at that moment, Uo's thoughts were interrupted as the floor underneath her suddenly and all of a sudden became nonexistent. Her knees dropped from under her, and Uo's hands went instinctively to hold down the hem of her skirt. No, wait, she was in the middle of the woods. No need to be concerned about being modest for a bunch of trees, a stupid cat, and a stupid rabbit. Thinking fast, she grabbed for a tree root.

Her hands scraped against the ground as it rapidly grew taller than her. Her fingers raked against a leaf of a feathery fern, and then that was gone, replaced by empty air.

She was falling!

Falling...!

Falling......

Uo was still falling five minutes later down a dark tunnel that didn't seem to have a bottom.

She crossed her arms on her chest and scowled in the dark. She was decidedly bored at this point.

"This tunnel has got to be very deep, or I'm falling very slowly," she mused to herself out loud. Her voice echoed around her, confirming her theory that the tunnel was very deep. After another minute of falling, she shook her head in disgust. "I wish I would hit the ground already. Then I could make some rabbit stew out of that- OW!"

She hadn't said "ow" because she'd landed on the ground. Rather, something had landed on her.

Rubbing the new bump on her head with one hand, she flung out her other hand blindly and caught whatever had hit her. After fiddling around with the object for a few seconds, she hit a switch, and light filled the tunnel.

"Oh, goodie, a lamp," Uo muttered to herself. "I'm so glad it wasn't anything useful like, say, a parachute."

Uo was about toss the lamp away when she noticed the walls of the tunnel. They were going by very slowly, and now and then Uo would pass a cabinet or a bookshelf nailed down, and, sometimes, falling objects would pass by her. Uo considered herself lucky that the lamp was the only thing that hit her, especially when a flock of winged bowling balls rained around her.

Falling for five minutes is boring, but falling for nearly half an hour is even more so. Luckily, Uo had snagged a flying book of crossword puzzles from the air and, with the aid of the lamp, she had managed to keep herself entertained until she hit the bottom.

And although falling wasn't very exciting, crash landing at the bottom of a very deep tunnel wasn't exactly fun, either.

Up ahead of her, Uo saw the rabbit scamper off down the new tunnel that was, thankfully, horizontal instead of vertical. Not only that, but it had hardwood floors, good lighting, and now and then, doors on either the right or left side. Uo dropped her crosswords puzzle (who cared about a six-letter word for "get in the way of" anyway?) and her lamp (which swung upside down on its cord inches away from the ground) to continue the chase.

The rabbit had disappeared around a corner, but it didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out which door he'd taken. Assuming the rabbit had opposable thumbs, Uo had reasoned, he would've taken the only door that was short enough for him to reach the knob.

When Uo tried to open it, it was locked. She shrugged and kicked the door through with her foot. Teach that little rabbit a thing or two about ignoring her again!

After squeezing her way through the teeny tiny door, Uo found herself in a garden of rose bushes, no rabbit in sight.

"Gosh darnit!" Uo grumbled, stomping the ground with her foot. Too frustrated to look around her, she sat on the ground and fumed.

But it was really hard to fume, what with all the roses in full bloom around her.

Uo felt herself relaxing. It wasn't that she liked roses in particular, but these were so nice, the fragrance light on the air like a thin mist. It seemed like all of the buds were in full bloom, every single one, and not one of them appeared to be in danger of wilting.

"Amazing," she heard herself say. She reached out in spite of herself, and gently pulled the face of a particularly fat blossom of the bush towards her. It was almost as wonderful as Tohru's garden in the Labyrinth-- almost.

The stem snapped suddenly, severing the rose from the bush.

Uo mentally took back her good opinion of the rose bush quality here. Sure, the roses were pretty, and they smelled nice, but what kind of a dopey gardener would let the bush grow so weak that it snapped so easily? Tohru would never abuse flowers like that!

Remembering Tohru suddenly reminded Uo of something else.

"Leaping lizards!" she cried, jumping to her feet. "The broom!"

She didn't notice a squeak from near her foot, so lost in her thoughts Uo was.

Tohru's broom was still lying somewhere on or near the road less traveled by. How was she supposed to pick up Hana now, and how was she supposed to tell Tohru when she got back?

"Excuse me?" asked a little voice, but Uo was still thinking too fast.

Come to think of it, she left her essay behind, too! That really wasn't too much of a problem since she could still make the deadline-- all she had to do was print up what she had already written. But still, that really—

"Excuse me!" the little voice shouted politely, and this time, Uo heard it.

"What?" she asked, looking left and right.

"I… uh… don't mean to be rude, but… you seem to be standing on my tail."

Uo looked down and saw a mouse, and she was indeed standing on his tail.

"Oh, jeez. Sorry about that," she said, lifting her foot.

"Thank you," the mouse said, picking up his tail with his front paws and stepping away from Uo's foot with deliberate haste.

"Don't mention it. Hey, do you know where I could find a phone?" Uo asked. "I need to call a friend and tell her I'm going to be late picking her up."

"There should be one inside the house," Yuki informed.

"The house?" Uo turned her head and noticed, for the first time, the Japanese-styled house.

"One more thing," she continued, turning back to the mouse. "How to I get to grandmother's house?"

The mouse twitched at that. It was a little twitch, but it was noticeable.

"Go back down the road less traveled by until you reach the Yellow Brick Road. Then, take the second path to the right and straight on till evening," he said pleasantly, like he hadn't twitched or been stepped on at all. "If you hurry, you'll make it before dark."

"Great, thanks." Uo said, already heading towards the house to make a phone call, taking the particularly fat rose blossom with her.

...

Moral of today's story: Don't trust stereotypes or you will fly into trouble.


	5. on predicting the weather

CHAPTER 5  
_In which stuff happens, but not really._

Midnight.

Well… more like five in the evening, give or take a few minutes.

It was a dark and stormy night.

At least, that's what the weatherman predicted. So far, the sky was clear of any clouds. All the clouds were currently at the bi-annual cloud parade at Easter Bunny Islands off the southern coast of Lontymago.

Hanajima Saki, who you may recall meeting at the beginning of this strange and sundry tale of magic and misadventure, was currently sitting in the living room of her grandmother's house and with the book she had earlier _borrowed_ from the Sohma family in her lap. She had almost reached the exciting climax when the doorbell rang.

Hana stood, and the light of the lamp next to the couch to threw her shadow into sharp relief against the far wall. Hana hoped the person at the door wasn't that campaign girl telling her to vote 'yes' on demolishing the remaining Shoe-Styled Houses in district 41102. Hana had probably signed that petition three times already that day.

Note: Shoe-Styled Houses were all the rage in the early 70s, but they're construction was soon halted because many of them were built with asbes-toes, a material as insulating as wooly socks but made other houses sick. Hana's grandmother's house was suffering an asbes-toes related disease at the moment, but the local house doctor promised to arrive the next day.

"Knock," she called to the unknown visitor, "and the door will open."

_Shave and a haircut_, the person knocked, and Hana smiled. The door swung open, revealing Uo behind it.

"Sorry I'm so late," Uo said apologetically as she stepped into the living room where Hana waited.

"Not at all," Hana replied. "I found other ways to keep myself entertained. But, if I may ask," she added, "What took you so long?"

Uo opened her mouth as if to answer, but paused.

"You know… I don't remember," she said ponderously.

---

Back at the Sohmas' house, Kyo had fallen asleep on the roof while Momiji kept Yuki company outside in the rose garden. Shigure and Hatori sat and flopped respectively indoors, both discussing an event that had happened earlier that day.

"It should have worked," Shigure said with exaggerated mopiness. Mopily. With much moping.

"Possibly," Hatori replied in a neutral voice, "But it didn't."

"It almost did. I was human for a little while."

"I don't think ten seconds constitutes a cure."

Shigure sighed and lay down, head on front paws. In another moment, his ears perked up.

"But if she hugged me every ten seconds," he began brightly, but Hatori ended that train of thought quickly with a decisive:

"No."

You may recall that, in the previous chapter, Uotani Arisa was about to enter the Sohmas' house to make a phone call to Hanajima Saki. Well, she did enter the house, but instead of finding a phone, she found the cutest Labrador retriever EVER! just sitting there in the entrance hall, and… and it was just so… so _cute_…

Uotani was just a big sucker for cute things (for example: Tohru), and she could not resist the sudden and overwhelming compulsion to hug the little punk. As soon as she did, however, there was a rather large and impressive POFF-ing sound followed by a cloud of blue-colored smoke. When the smoke cleared, Uo discovered she was no longer hugging a dog. She was holding onto the torso of a man dressed in a gray-blue yukata.

Note: Of course he was wearing clothes. Yes, he was!

"My love!" Shigure cried in his human form, about to throw his arms around Uo if Uo hadn't at that moment smashed a lead pipe in the ground between them. (Where did that pipe come from? Nobody knows…)

"Touch me and die," Uo said in a very spooky, scary sort of voice. Pinwheels of fire seemed to suspend themselves in the air around her, and Shigure's memory chip reminded him of another young woman with electric pinwheels acting in the same manner.

"Of course," Shigure laughed nervously. "But you see, I was cursed by an evil sorceress, and only the kiss of my true love could bring me back to my human form. Clearly, you and I are destined to – "

"I clearly remember hugging a dog, not kissing one," Uo interrupted, her voice going all spookier and scarier.

Shigure smiled.

"Ah. Well… I meant…"

Uo must have been bored of this conversation, because she had already turned away as Shigure continued to search for words.

"There a phone I can use?" she asked, and right as she said that, two things happened. One – Shigure changed back into a dog with a loud POOF! sound. Two – Hatori erased Uo's memory of the past minute with a soft POOM! sound.

Uo blinked.

"How did…? Wasn't I just in the garden?" Uo asked herself, clearly confused as she glanced about herself at the interior of the house.

"Uh…" Shigure and Hatori said simultaneously. Usually, when a person had her memory erased, she would need a minute to reorient herself. Luckily, any explanations Shigure or Hatori could come up with on the spot were suspended as Momiji hop-skipped through the door behind Uo.

"Haaa~tooh~riiiii," Momiji sang, "I couldn't find Kyo, but I did find a girl and I think she might have followed… oh. Never mind."

Up whirled around to face the rabbit.

"You!" she accused.

POOM! went Hatori's memory-eraser spell.

"Don't you think that's dangerous, using it so often?" Shigure asked more out of curiosity than concern.

Hatori would have shrugged if he had shoulders, but he was forced instead to wave a flipper through the air. To Momiji, he said, "Would you escort her back to the Yellow Brick Road and stay with her until she recovers her wits?"

"Hey," Shigure said indignantly, "I'm perfectly capable of doing that, too. Why didn't you ask me?"

Later, Uo found herself standing on the Yellow Brick Road. She thought she saw the flash of a rabbit tail disappear behind a bush, but between talking cats, rabbits and mice, she'd had enough animal encounters for one day. She didn't remember a talking dog, but if she had, she may have thought he vaguely resembled a famous author.

But that was hours ago, and now, Shigure gave another heavy sigh.

"Oh well," he said bravely. "Perhaps it simply wasn't meant to be…"

Hatori might have looked a bit peeved, but it was hard to tell because he was a seahorse.

"I've been meaning to ask you," Hatori began instead, changing the subject not subtly at all, "but I noticed that Kyo was here. I suppose he's finished his training with Kazuma, then?"

"Who knows," Shigure said. "I hear that Kazuma has gone off to save the world (again), so it's possible Kyo is taking a vacation. Of course, Kyo is welcome here for as long as he wants to stay."

"I doubt Kyo would want to," Hatori said doubtfully.

"Or he might, since it gives him an excuse to fight Yuki," Shigure countered. "And anway," he continued, "Kyo isn't in any shape to go back now."

"I suppose," Hatori said neutrally.

"Actually," Shigure though aloud in a sudden burst of realization, "If you're a seahorse, how are _you_ supposed to get home?"

---

At the same time Shigure and Hatori had fallen into a companionable silence, Uotani Arisa was smiling. Hana's grandmother had just put a fresh batch of cookies into the stove, and she had promised that Uo had first dibs when they came out. Uo was about to dash to the kitchen to check the egg timer when Hana, sitting next to her on the couch, sighed and closed the book she had been reading. Uo could clearly see the title written on the cover: _Chicken Soup for the Person Who Tends to Get Cursed a Lot's Soul_.

"No way! I didn't know the fifth book was out already," Uo said excitedly, momentarily forgetting about the cookies in the kitchen.

Hana professed that she didn't know the book was a part of a series. Uo explained:

"It's great! The first book is _Chicken Soup and the Philosopher's Stove_. I personally liked the third book best: _Chicken Soup and the Cook of Azkaban_. It's an international best seller. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it."

"I suppose I'll have to check them out," Hana said breezily.

"You should. If you're finished with that one, is it okay if I…?" Uo began, but Hana only smiled.

"Of course you may borrow it," she assured.

"Thanks. I've had to wait, like, a year, and -- "

"But only if I get first dibs on the cookies."

"…. Oh. _Ouch_. You play dirty."

…

Moral of today's story: The weatherman is always wrong.  
Also: Cookies are great.


	6. on reading advertisements

CHAPTER 6  
_In which the fairy godmother-in-training reads the classifieds,  
the wind becomes blusterous, and the cursed family interviews a potential housekeeper._

It had been nearly a week since the escapades of the previous chapter, and Tohru Honda, friend of Arisa Uotani and Saki Hanajima, was currently sitting at the counter of Dina's Diner and reading the comic section of the Daily Prophet. After taking a sip of her loco-cocoa-mocha-whipped-creamified-creampuffified-decaffienated coffee with a cherry on top, Tohru reluctantly flipped to the classifieds. Here, she read:

WANTED UNDEAD OF ALIVE!  
Would you like to learn more of Fafaraway's city nightlife?  
Not particularly interested in the healthy glow of life?  
The Anti-Garlic Committee wants you!  
Office hours are from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.  
Volunteers should call our secretary or visit our website for more information.

Tohru sighed and flipped the page. Besides kind of enjoying the healthy glow of life, she needed a job that would pay her money. Now that the semester was over, she needed to use the time this summer to save for next semester's tuition.

My cat is interested in learning to play the fiddle. We would  
like someone who would give her lessons once a week as well  
as broaden her interest in music. Rates for instruction negotiable.  
Call H. Diddle at home or at the office.

It wasn't as though Tohru couldn't get a job-- her credentials were outstanding, and she was sure that her past employers would write excellent recommendations if asked. At least, they would write excellent recommendations, but they might not be legible. The Goblin King had a tendency to embellish letters with ten loopedy-loops each, and the Translvanian wrote with a heavy accent. But if they were legible, they would definitely be impressive.

Are you a talented scientist who is sometimes referred to as 'mad?'  
Future dictator-of-the-world Brain wants you! Contact him directly  
at the ACME building, room 1788 in the mouse cage a little ways from  
the window.

In any case, Tohru thought, if she really got desperate, she could always apply to Shoe Shop and Other Overnight Miracles Inc. as an intern of sorts. They were always hiring interns of sorts. But, Tohru thought passionately, what she really wanted was to be a gardener! She loved flowers and vegetables and fruits, especially strawberries, and she was so proud of her abilities, too!

Housekeeper wanted for the house at the end of the road less traveled  
since current occupants are currently not fit for the job. Interviews will begin  
at the house at 9:00 tomorrow morning. Hired applicant shall stay in the  
house for the time he or she is employed, and chores would include making  
breakfast, lunch and dinner, washing laundry and dishes, general housekeeping, and  
GARDENING.

When Tohru read that last word, "gardening" (which wasn't actually in all caps, mind you), she froze in the act of bringing the cup of loco-cocoa-and-mocha-whip-cremafied-creampuffafied-decaffinated-coffee with a cherry on top to her lips. Then, with her eyes shining bright and soft, fuzzy, fluffy lights dancing around her, Tohru slammed her money on the table with a 100 percent tip and sped out the door.

Note: Needless to say, the waitress was delighted in getting a $2.50 tip, and she used that to buy herself hairclips. She wore those hairclips on a date with a friend to the movies, and her friend said that her hair looked pretty, and then he blushed. The waitress was on cloud nine for the rest of the night.

If Tohru had taken a little more time to read the paper further, she might have noticed the humorous last line of the ad, "High school aged girls preferred," in teeny tiny print at the bottom. Also, and more importantly, in another section of the paper, the weatherman had predicted clear skies without any wind whatsoever.

And we all know how reliable that weatherman is…

The next day, Kyo was sitting on top of the roof sulking. Yuki had kicked the figurative stuffings out of him already that morning, again, and rather than have to deal with his furry mouse face that morning, Kyo had chosen to hide… er… hang out up here.

And because Kyo was sitting on the roof, minding his own business (that darn rat, I'll show him), he was the one who saw the first young lady walk down the road less traveled and stand at the edge of the garden.

"Holy Swiss cheese," Kyo thought, "not another one!" Kyo doubted if he could handle another female visitor, seeing as how the last one had delighted in throwing rocks at him, and the one before that had turned him into a cat. Kyo discreetly hunched down on the roof to make himself as small a target as possible.

Then, since saying "first young lady" suggests that there should be a second, lo and behold! A second one appeared! And then a third! Then a fourth, and then… well, to make this paragraph much shorter, a whole lot more. The girls milled around at the entrance of the garden awhile before some proactive girl decided they should make a line. After many polite "excuse me"s and "I was here first!"s and pushing and cat-fighting, a line indeed formed. It was quite an impressive line as far as lines go, and it stretched out far beyond what Kyo's cat eyes could see.

And then, to make matters worse, it began to rain.

Note: The Biannual Cloud Parade had ended last night, and many clouds were eager to go home. They had a busy schedule to keep, after all. Eight a.m., ominous gathering on the horizon. Eight twenty-three, total sky coverage. Eight thirty, five-minute coffee break. Eight thirty-five, rain.

"Crud," Kyo said as he jumped off the roof, onto the conveniently placed tree branch, and then inside the window, which was luckily open.

Meanwhile, on Memory Lane, Tohru had just finished taking a refreshing shower with her (ooh! ah!) Herbal Assault Shampoo/Conditioner and was now dressed in her favorite dress. After printing out her resume on a leaf of pink perfumed paper and placing it in a waterproof folder, she grabbed her umbrella from the broom closet and headed outside.

Uo had already told Tohru about the mysterious disappearance of Dusty, Tohru's broom, and had offered to give Sliver to Tohru as a replacement. Of course, Tohru had insisted that it wasn't necessary and that she was sure Dusty would return on its own accord. Flying brooms have lives of their own, after all. Anyway, Tohru probably wouldn't have flown her broom on a day like today. It was pouring outside!

Tohru opened her umbrella and headed down the street.

Back at the Sohma residence, Kyo had padded down to the first floor and stalked into the living room where Shigure and Yuki (Hatori and Momiji had returned home) were staring wistfully at a bag of ramen noodles. The dog and the rat had been doing this for the past half hour, and neither of them had come up with a good way to cook it on the stove since Shigure and Kyo didn't have the dexterity in their respective paws to heat anything on the stove, and Yuki was too small. They'd been living off take-out dinners for the past week, but since today was Monday, their favorite Chinese take-out place was closed, and Pizza Place didn't open for another five hours.

"Haven't you come up with anything yet?" Kyo complained loudly as he sat in the ring around the ramen.

"I don't see you helping," Yuki replied. "Then again, I doubt you could come up with anything without giving your teeny-tiny brain a headache."

"You're the one with a tiny brain, darn rat!"

"As much fun as I have watching you two fight," Shigure interrupted, "This isn't helping us get anywhere."

Really, Shigure should know better than to interrupt a fight between Yuki and Kyo. Actually, he did know better. But instead of getting the "stay out of this, you dumb mutt" from Kyo, he got this instead:

"There are a bunch of girls lined up outside the garden," Kyo said, looking at Shigure suspiciously.

Yuki snapped his attention to Shigure, too.

"What did you do?" he asked, eyes narrowed.

"I didn't do anything," Shigure said easily, waving a paw in the air. "Just put an ad in the paper, is all."

"You're not trying the Sleeping Beauty Cure!" Yuki stated in a quite end-all manner.

At the mention of the Sleeping Beauty Cure, Kyo blushed a magnificent shade of red, but as he had a layer of orange fur, it wasn't noticeable at all. Why ever did he do that?

"Actually, I wasn't planning on it," Shigure said airily. "I was just thinking that since we're practically helpless on our own, we'd need help from an able-bodied person. A house-keeper, of sorts."

"You mean a zoo-keeper," Yuki said bitterly.

"He means anyone who's young and female," Kyo muttered under his breath.

Shigure waved a paw through the air dismissively.

"Well," Shigure said, "it's not my fault if all the applicants turn out to fit that demographic."

"Unless you put in a footnote," Yuki said, "which, knowing you, you did."

"Well, maybe… but really! Yuki, Kyo, now that they're here, you really don't expect me to turn them away cold, do you? All those poor girls, waiting outside for the opportunity to work inside such a wonderful--"

"All right! All right! Invite them in already!" Kyo shouted.

And several miles away in a completely unrelated event, Tohru was following Yellow Brick Road when a sudden tornado popped up from out of nowhere. Her umbrella acted as a reverse parachute, and up into the air she flew!

Back inside Shigure's house:

Shigure and company were just about to open the door for the interviews when they heard a loud WHOOSHing sound outside.

"I wonder what that was?" Shigure mused, paw on the door.

And outside of Shigure's house:

The tornado had blown itself out into a forceful wind. All the girls who had neatly lined themselves up in front of the garden were swiftly blown away.

Note: Seven days later, all the girls showed up in Over the Rainbow district completely unharmed. Also, each girl had mysteriously received enough money to buy a ride home on the No Place Like Home express train.

And inside Shigure's house_:_

Shigure opened the door, and the three Sohmas padded outside.

And outside again:

"I thought you said there was a line of girls out here," Shigure said in a miffed tone.

"There was," Kyo replied, bristling.

"They probably left to get out of this rain," Yuki suggested.

"Actually, I think it's stopped raining," Shigure said, pointing up with his nose. As a reaction, Yuki and Kyo also looked up.

"Hey, what the blazes is that?" Kyo shouted.

"There's no need to shout; we're right here," Shigure sighed, rubbing the ear Kyo had shouted in.

"Is it a bird?" Yuki asked.

"A plane?" Shigure asked, looking back up at the sky and feeling the oddest sensation of déjà vu.

"No!" Kyo shouted, much to Shigure's ear's ire. "It's a crazy girl and an umbrella!"

And it certainly was! Well, the "crazy" part is up for debate.

Tohru's umbrella was now acting like a normal parachute instead of a reverse parachute. As she held the handle in a death grip with her right hand, she held down the hem of her skirt with her waterproof folder in her left as she floated gracefully to the ground.

"Uhm… hello," Tohru said, blushing furiously as the three Sohmas stared at her. She smiled nervously. "I'm here for the interview."

...

Moral of today's story: Read the fine print even if you don't follow it.


	7. on the character of dustbunnies

CHAPTER 7 (omigosh!)  
_In which the following quests begin:  
a quest for love, a quest for brunch, and a quest for dust spray._

"You're hired!" Shigure exclaimed at once. Like Uotani before her, Tohru didn't even bat an eye at the fact that the dog talked. She was, however, very surprised at what he said. She hadn't even gone through an interview, after all.

The orange cat and silver mouse seemed just as taken aback as she was, because at the exact moment Tohru opened her mouth in surprise, so did they.

"What?" the three of them said in stereo.

"And," Shigure continued, dragging out the word so he sounded very much like that guy on that show with the wheel and the fortune aaaaand a brand new car!, "It's been decided that your first task will be cooking brunch!"

---

Elsewhere in a kingdom two or three hours away depending on traffic, there lived a beautiful and lively princess who had been waiting (im)patiently for her beloved knight in shining armor to come and carry her off in a swell of orchestral music, a sunset, and the rising ending credits.

"Kyo… Kyo… wherever art thou, Kyo-Q?" the princess sighed in a manner only lovely damsels in mild-to-moderate distress can perform properly. She was standing by the widow of her room so a light breeze fluttered the gauzy white window curtains around her. Beyond the window, a bird with twittered a melancholic song, and a doe and her fawn hesitantly stepped from the surrounding Relatively Dark Forest into a grassy clearing on the other side of the moat of the castle. A few fluffy bunnies bounced as effortlessly as basketballs in the same grassy clearing.

After watching the idyllic scene through the window, the princess turned away and flung herself dramatically on her unkempt bed. (Even if she was a princess, she didn't like making her bed just like the rest of us.) The inside of her room was equally untidy. There were books strewn across the floor, her cloudy glass slippers and matching earrings placed over thereabouts in the corner, the straw-spun-gold carpet littered with the delicate and detailed furniture of the six-foot tall, four-story dollhouse with working electric lights and swimming pool and Porsche, the latest gaming console, digitally enhanced for the greatest –

"Savvy salamanders, Kyo!" the princess shouted abruptly, interrupting the list of her belongings. "Where are you?!"

Without waiting for an answer (because Kyo wasn't there to answer it, and if he was, there wasn't really a point in asking it, was there?), the princess wrested herself from the bed and stomped back to the window.

"And you! Be quiet! I need to think!" she said in a manner that couldn't really be interpreted as polite to the bird still singing outside. The bird immediately shut its beak and flew off. Well, if that princess couldn't appreciate good music, it was no skin off his teeth.

The princess turned to face the inside of her room again, hands on her hips. Well, if Kyo wasn't going to find her here, she would have to go find him, instead.

---

Because the princess interrupted her list of belongings, the reader was not able to notice that she was also in possession of a mirror. From a distance, the mirror looked quite ordinary, but if you were to stand closer to it… actually, it still looked like an ordinary mirror. But maybe that's why it looked so out of place.

Moreover, it was a mirror that looked very similar to the one in Hatori's office. The princess was, after all, another Sohma. (It's a very large family!)

---

But enough of the princess, at least for the moment. Shigure had escorted Tohru to the kitchen while Yuki attempted to arrange her muddy shoes neatly out of the way in the entrance hall and Kyo unsuccessfully tried to hang her umbrella on the umbrella rack by the door. (Since he'd been living there for a week, Kyo finally found out where they were kept, the umbrellas.) Now standing in the kitchen, Tohru wasn't sure what to say.

"Yes, it is a little messy," Shigure admitted to Tohru's silence. Saying it was a little messy was a bit of an understatement, like saying the Enchanted Mountains were a little tall or being an animal was a little inconvenient for making ramen noodles. The lint screen of a vacuum cleaner was squeaky clean compared to this junkyard.

"Oh no, it's just… it's only… uh…" Tohru began, then smiled bravely and switched to another topic. "I can make something without the stove."

The stove was currently buried under a mountain of pots and pans. Suffice to say, Shigure was in need of a housekeeper before he was transfigured into a dog, and also, he had an absurd amount of pots and pans.

Tohru squeezed between the wall and collection of garbage bags.

"Yeek!" she sqeaked abruptly, leaping away as if burned.

"What?" Shigure barked in alarm.

Tohru slowly pointed a trembling finger at the garbage bag.

"It _moved_," she whispered urgently. The young woman and dog continued to stare at it for a long, hard minute.

---

Having made her decision, the princess threw open the double doors of the castle and kicked down the drawbridge with a mighty _swishfallBOOM! _Just as she was about to leave, Kagura noticed one of her ladies-in-waiting had wandered up behind her curiously. Okay, so technically, Ritsu wasn't a lady-in-waiting because he wasn't, strictly speaking, a lady. He was a marquess.

"Oh, hello, Ritsu. I'm going out, okay?" the princess said musically as if she hadn't just thrown open the doors that usually took three or four strapping young men to budge nor kicked down the drawbridge that had effectively kept out the occasional bad-tempered Jabberwocky.

Ritsu smiled nervously, his hands twisted together in front of himself.

"Oh. That sounds nice. Where are you going?"

"I," Kagura said with Great Drama, "am on a quest for Love."

"How noble," Ritsu said, wishing he was brave enough to quest for something like that. He'd been on a quest for Courage, once, but he somehow ended up with a collection of seashells, instead. Oh well. They were nice seashells.

"Do tell mother I shan't make it for tea today," Kagura informed the marquess-in-waiting. Then, because she and Ritsu were good friends, she added, "If I find any Courage on the way, I'll bring some back for you."

---

Young Tohru Honda went to the cupboard to get the poor dog a bone after staring at the garbage bag for some time and deciding it hadn't moved after all. When she was there, the cupboard, that is, she found it was bare, so Shigure had none.

"I could go grocery shopping," Tohru offered helpfully as she climbed around the garbage bag on her way back to Shigure. The bag didn't move… this time.

"Not at all," Shigure said, wagging his head from side to side. "Yuki, Kyo and myself should be able to get something ourselves."

"Oh, no! It wouldn't be any trouble at all!" Tohru insisted.

Shigure shook his head again. "To tell the truth," he replied, "I'd rather you cleaned the kitchen. That way, when we come back, you'll be able to make something right away. Is that all right?

Tohru considered this proposition a moment, her eyebrows flattened into a pair of thoughtful lines over her eyes. She was really quite expressive, like a cartoon character. It only took her a second to make a decision, and her expression switched from thoughtful to determined as fast as a flipbook.

"Yes! Leave it to me!" she agreed.

And so, on that fateful day, Yuki the Sarcastic, Kyo the Complaining, and Shigure the Wordsmith went on a quest for brunch. Once outside, it was Yuki, of course, who posed the problem to the others.

"How exactly did you plan on getting food?" he asked, directing his question to Shigure. "I don't suppose you have any money hidden in your fur, and even if you did, they don't allow dogs in the supermarket."

Yuki was hitching a ride on Shigure's head, because it would have been a slow-moving quest if he did otherwise. It wasn't because Yuki's legs were so itty-bitty. Rather, it was because Kyo was likely to pick another fight with him. In his cat form, however, Kyo was fighting the instinct to flee up the nearest tree from a dog, so Yuki was relatively safe for the moment.

"We do have neighbors," Shigure replied to Yuki's earlier concerns. "And this is an enchanted forest. The other animals living here should be able to give us advice."

"Unless we're on their menu," Yuki pointed out.

"I wouldn't worry about that," Shigure said brightly. "Not many animals would eat a dog."

"That makes me feel so much better," Yuki muttered.

Kyo, who had been lagging behind with a disgruntled expression, stopped suddenly and turned his nose to the west.

"Hey!" he called to his cousins. "There's something cooking over there!"

Back at the house, Tohru stood confronting the sea of decay of the kitchen.

"Where do I even start?" she asked no one in particular. Well, it wasn't like the place would clean itself. Without waiting for an answer, Tohru simply grabbed the topknot of the nearest garbage bag and began dragging it out.

It moved. Again. In the opposite direction Tohru pulled it.

Tohru shrieked (again) and leaped back. The bag began rolling back to its original position.

"I hope those weren't leftovers," Tohru thought to herself. Out loud, she said: "Um… excuse me, Mr. Garbage Bag, but I really need to clean the kitchen. Would you mind very terribly if… ah… you rolled outside to the garbage bin?"

"Yes, I would very much mind," said a gritty voice. We'll assume it belonged to the garbage bag for the moment.

"Oh," Tohru said, visibly deflating. She didn't want to offend the garbage bag, but she wanted to help Shigure and the others, too.

The bag trembled, and from underneath it (as opposed to inside – yuck!) a cloud of blue dust swirled onto the floor. As it shaped itself into a form, Tohru gasped and backed up into the doorway.

"You are… you are…!" she stammered through her fear.

The collection of blue dust cackled. Evilly.

"Yes! A dust bunny, and an evil blue one at that!" it said, pronouncing each word with perfect malevolence. His teachers at the Institute of Evil Bad Persons would have been proud.

Tohru had heard of dust bunnies before, but she had always thought they were only in fairytales.

Oh wait. This _was_ a fairytale. Drat.

"Ah… well… Mr. Blue Dust Bunny…"

"That's Mr. _Evil_ Blue Dust Bunny of Death! Death and Destruction to you, missy!"

"Sorry!" Tohru responded automatically, "Mr. _Evil_ Blue Dust Bunny of Death! Death and Destruction!, sir, I'm really very sorry, but you can't stay here because – "

"Silence! You will do no such thing!" the dust bunny commanded in his most evilly evil voice yet. "From the day Shigure moved here," it continued, "I knew this house would be easily converted into my secret base of evil (but not as evil as me) hordes of dust devil minions. It will only be a few days more until my plan come into fruition, and no upstart housekeeper can get in my way!"

"But, Mr. Evil Blue Dust Bunny of Death! Death and – "

"First, the kitchen. Then, the house. Then, the ENTIRE WORLD!! Attack, my evil dust devil minions! Attack the housekeeper!"

...

Moral of today's story: Cleanliness is next to godliness,  
rooms 243 and 244, respectively.


	8. on leaps of faith

CHAPTER 8  
_In which the dust bunny, the couch, and the broom attack! _

If you recall from previous chapters, both Hana and Uo could display particularly strong emotions through a physical manifestation of their mad magical powers. In the case of Hana, it was through electric sparks, and in the case of Uo, fire pinwheels.

Tohru also had this ability, and whenever she felt strongly on some emotion, the power she displayed would come out as shoujo bubbles.

Note for the magically disinclined: You will recall that back in Dina's Diner, when Tohru found the ad in the paper for a gardener, she expressed her happiness, and I quote, "with her eyes shining bright and soft, fuzzy, fluffy lights dancing around her." Tohru's textbook,_ Wishful Thinking: The Standard Guide to Becoming a Successful Fairy Godparent_, defines shoujo bubbles as magic in the form of softly glowing soap bubbles. Normally, this power is perfectly harmless, but as they were soap bubbles, and as the dust bunny's evil minions were, indeed, made of dust…

The Dust Devils didn't know what hit them.

"Oh no! I'm so sorry!" Tohru cried as the remnants of the Dust Devils fell on the floor with a gloopy slosh. "I wasn't thinking! It was instinct!"

"Curses!" Mr. Evil Blue Dust Bunny etc. cursed. "Who would have thought a wretched little girl like you could defeat me? But I'll get you yet, my pretty, and your little dog, too!"

And with that, the dust bunny began throwing gloopy globs of mud. Tohru ran out of the kitchen, but the dust bunny trailed her in hot pursuit!

_Meanwhile:_

Kyo, Shigure and Yuki had by now reached the house that Kyo had spotted earlier.

"Smells like porridge," Shigure sighed dreamily. "I love porridge."

"It looks like they left the door open," Yuki said, jumping off of Shigure's head and scampering up to said door. "Do you think they're home?"

Kyo, who had been sitting just outside the doorway already, leaned his head inside and shouted, "Oi! Anybody home?"

Nobody answered.

"I'm sure they won't mind if we wait inside for them," Shigure said.

"Are you crazy?!" Yuki and Kyo shouted in unison.

"There might be bears living in there!" Kyo continued.

"And they probably wouldn't appreciate finding three strange animals skulking around in their house," Yuki added.

"You mean three adorably cute and friendly animals," Shigure corrected.

"If anyone thought you were cute…" Yuki muttered.

"You're so cruel to me, Yuki," Shigure whimpered.

The three animals continued to hover around the entrance of the house without actually crossing the threshold. Yuki, who had already decided quite firmly to himself that it would be extraordinarily rude to enter without permission, spent a minute looking up at the tree branches of the Relatively Dark Forest where bits of light poked through green leaves. After all, he couldn't stand the thought of anyone coming into his own room without warning.

"Well, I'm not going in there," Kyo finally said more to himself than for anyone else's benefit. You may recall that Kyo had been on the Mountain of the Morning fighting lions, tigers and bears (oh my!), and he wasn't sure if the bears here—he was sure it was a bear's home, considering that there was the name BEAR on the door—were one's that he had scrapped a fight with before.

Although it was a two to one vote against him, Shigure, with a swish of his tail, walked into the cottage anyway. From their spots just outside the door, Kyo and Yuki watched Shigure with scowls on their faces as Shigure regarded the living room.

There were three sofas, and before either cat or mouse could stop him, Shigure leapt onto the first one.

"Ow!" Shigure cried indignantly, "What's this thing made out of, bricks?"

"You dumb mutt," Kyo grumbled. "No dogs on the furniture."

"Kyo, that's not very nice," Shigure said as he jumped onto the next sofa. He immediately began sinking into the cushion.

"Meep! I'm sinking! Help me!" Shigure exclaimed. Two seconds later, he was completely swallowed up by the entirely too-soft couch!

_Meanwhile!_

"Kyo-Q! I love you!" the princess sang merrily as she came to the entrance of the Relatively Dark Forest. The wind was doing that thing again with her hair and the cherry blossom petals, and it was most inconvenient because the flower petals were covering up the forest floor and, consequently, the forest pathways, as well. Which way was she supposed to go to find the Mountain of the Morning?

"Never fear, my heart shall carry me to you, most beloved Kyo!" the princess said quite earnestly--some might say a bit ferociously.

Here, the princess paused in her step and placed both hands over her heart. There must be some way to incorporate that line into her "Kyo-Q! I love you!" song. After several minutes of playing with rhyme and tinkering with rhythm, the princess decided that interpretative jazz fitted her just dandy.

"Kyo-Q! I love you! My heart shines through! Doot doot doo. I'll find you!"

She kicked through the cherry blossom petals that had piled up around her ankles and, singing her new song, began walking in the direction her heart insisted was the Mountain of the Morning.

_Meanwhile!_

Tohru had never considered herself a fast runner, but it appeared this was so only because she never had the right motivation before.

Having a deranged evil blue dust bunny of Death! Death and Destruction! chasing after her sure did the trick, though. Tohru was really flying now! She had made it out of the house and was now racing down the road less traveled in search of help.

_And back to the animals!_

Yuki and Kyo were trying to help Shigure out of the quicksand sofa, but it wasn't working very well. I won't go into details, but it went sort of like this:

"Move over, you stupid cat. You're standing on my tail."

You move over, you darn rat! You're in my way!"

"You don't even know what you're doing. You're just making it worse!"

"Uhn… Plz stob ahguin an' GED MEH OUD!" Shigure cried pitifully from somewhere inside the sofa.

"Darn rat!"

"Stupid cat!"

"You wanna take this outside?"

"Helb meh, Ah'm stell sungig!" Shigure mourned.

"You're not worth the time."

"I'm going to wipe that smug smile off your face!"

"And I haven't heard that before."

From inside the sofa, Shigure heard the muffled sounds of a mouse and cat fighting. He sighed and began to doggy-paddle inside the sofa. Then, suddenly, he was out!

Looking around at the evidence – shredded furnishing and padding all over the place – Shigure correctly guessed that Kyo had accidentally swiped at the couch when attacking Yuki.

"Kyo! You saved me!" Shigure cried happily.

"Wait, shut up!" Kyo said, pricking up his ears. "Someone's coming."

All three were silent as they strained their ears.

Kyo's whiskers twitched. Were those… cherry blossoms he smelled? It couldn't be; it was summer. Unless…

"It's probably just the owners," Shigure said casually, breaking the silence.

"And they'll be ever so pleased to see what you two have done to their sofa," Yuki said.

"Whaddya mean, us two?" Kyo snapped indignantly. "It's all _your_ fault."

"Oh yes, because it was me who was trying out the sofas and it was me that shredded one of them to ribbons," Yuki muttered.

"You think you're so great, but--"

The sound of approaching footsteps on the ground caused everyone to jump and run.

Just at the moment Kyo exited through the back door in hot pursuit of Yuki and Shigure, the princess stepped inside the front door. A few pink flower petals landed on the floor inside the house. Kyo had indeed smelled cherry blossoms.

The princess found a cottage in the middle of the forest. Her heart told her to go inside, so go inside she did. Upon entering the cottage, she saw a nice and neat little interior, save for a shredded couch and muddy paw prints leading towards the back door. Kagura might have followed those paw prints, but at that moment, the smell of porridge drifted towards her out of a door to her left.

The princess suddenly realized how hungry she was. Without another thought, she followed the smell of porridge through the door and into the kitchen where she found three bowls of porridge waiting on the table. Being a princess, she didn't know that it was considered impolite to walk into a stranger's house and take their food, so she happily sampled a little of each bowl.

The first bowl of porridge was too hot and spicy, the second too sweet and sour, but the third was just right, and the princess daintily devoured the entire bowl.

Now that she was full, the princess could continue on her way to the Mountain of the Morning and find her beloved Kyo! First, however, she was sure to write a thank you note on a napkin for the stranger's kind hospitality, and she put it on the table by the empty bowl. Then, flipping her hair away from her face, the princess exited through the back door, but she completely forgot about following the muddy paw prints and headed North instead of East.

_Meanwhile!_

East of the cottage, Shigure and company had just discovered a house made out of gingerbread.

_And back to Tohru!_

Tohru had been running for the longest time before she caught sight of a little cottage in the middle of the forest. Hoping that someone inside knew how to defeat evil blue dust bunnies (shoujo bubbles didn't seem to work, and her classes weren't supposed to study this subject until second semester), Tohru ran inside through the opened door.

"Excuse me…!" she cried breathlessly, "I'm sorry to intrude, but an evil blue… oh dear…"

The evil blue dust bunny was already catching up. In a split-second decision, Tohru chose to run up the stairs rather than out the back door. She couldn't run forever!

Once upstairs, Tohru ran into one of the rooms and slammed the door behind her, then locked it.

"What am I supposed to do?" she whimpered as she heard the dust bunny whirling up the stairs. "I've never been chased by a dust bunny before, and I don't have a wand or dust spray to get rid of him!"

"Little housekeeper, little housekeeper, let me in!" called the dust bunny from outside the door.

"No, thank you," Tohru called back. She had to think!

"Then I'll whirl, and I'll twirl, and I'll blow the door down."

"Oh my," Tohru thought. She looked around the room and saw three tidy beds lined up side by side in the middle of the floor. One was too tall, one was too short, but the other was just right. Tohru hurried over to it and hid beneath it.

"Hey, watch it!" growled a voice next to her.

"Oh! I'm sorry, who are you?" Tohru asked.

"I'm whirling!" the dust bunny warned from outside the door.

"I'm the monster that lives under the bed, stupid," the growling voice said.

"Oh," Tohru said. "I'm being chased by the Evil Blue Dust Bunny of Death! Death and Destruction! Is it okay if I hide under here?"

"I'm twirling!" the dust bunny cried.

"Now what kind of monster would I be if I helped save you from a-- yeah, fine, you can hide under here."

"Thank you, Mr. Monster."

"Don't mention it."

"And I'm busting down the door!"

And at that moment, two things happened at once. The door burst open as the dust bunny knocked it down, and the window shattered as—

"Dusty!" Tohru exclaimed happily.

"You know, you're not supposed to shout like that when you're trying to hide," the monster said disapprovingly.

But sure enough, Dusty the Flying Broomstick—which, if you recall, was lost in the forest when Uo ran into the tree branch—had just flown in through the window, glass shards sparkling around it and several leaves of a camphor tree still stuck in its bristles.

"Uh oh," the dust bunny said.

Tohru knew just what to do now. Without hesitating, she jumped out from under the bed and grasped the handle of the broom and began sweeping up the dust.

_Meanwhile!_

Shigure and company finally stopped running nearly a mile away from the Gingerbread House of Horrors.

"I told you it was too good to be true," Kyo growled. He was trying to clean himself of all the crumbs from where he and the others had crashed through the wall to escape.

"I'm so hungry," Shigure moaned. "It's almost dinnertime, by now."

"Why didn't you just ask the housekeeper to go shopping for us?" Yuki asked.

"She's cleaning the kitchen," Shigure said reproachfully. "You don't want me to exhaust her with too many chores on the first--"

"You let her clean the kitchen!" Yuki exclaimed. "By herself!"

"What kind of a monster are you?" Kyo shouted.

"What?" Shigure asked, sincerely confused.

"The mess is a health hazard, for one," Yuki explained, trying to calm himself. "But… haven't you ever heard the tales of the Evil Blue Dust Bunny?"

"That's just a fairytale," Shigure said nonchalantly. The comprehension dawned. "And we're in one right now."

Without another word, the three animals took off like a shot back to their house.

_Meanwhile!_

Mama Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear had just returned home from a day of shopping. Upon entering the house, they gasped simultaneously and dropped all of their shopping bags in a collective whumph.

"Someone's been in our house," Papa Bear exclaimed.

"It's so clean!" Mama Bear said happily. And sure enough, it was. Tohru, who had felt very sorry about the broken window, had decided to clean the entire house. There was no longer any evidence that anyone had been there, save for the broken window, three clean bowls, and two notes on the kitchen table.

Note: Tohru had found out that the monster under the bed was actually very nice, and also that he often repaired Baby Bear's broken toys when he'd filled his obligatory three hours of monstering a week. After only a few repeated requests from Tohru, the monster agreed to mend the couch that Kyo had shredded earlier that day.

One note was from the princess, thanking the bears for a scrumptious meal; and the other was from Tohru, assuring that when she got her first paycheck, she would pay for the broken window.

"Well, wasn't that nice?" Mama Bear asked Papa Bear after they had read the notes.

_Back at Shigure's!_

Shigure, Yuki and Kyo burst in through the doors of their kitchen.

"Miss Housekeeper?" Yuki asked, realizing he hadn't caught her name in their initial meeting.

"I think we have the wrong house," Kyo said.

"You think? I find that hard to believe."

"Well, it's just so cl—Hey! Was that an insult?"

"Oh, hello everyone," Tohru said as she came back into the CLEAN (gasp!) kitchen.

"You're okay!" Shigure cried.

"Uh huh!" Tohru smiled. "There was an evil dust bunny, but other than that, it was easy. After he was gone, there wasn't any dust left at all, so I just had to take out the garbage and wash the dishes, and I was finished."

"You're amazing," Yuki said.

"Oh no, I'm not," Tohru said, blushing. "Anyway, when you didn't return home, I made dinner. There was a bag of rice and a rice-cooker in a hidden passage I found when I was putting up my broom. I hope you don't mind."

Shigure, overcome with emotion and maybe just a hint of mischief, couldn't contain himself.

"Oh! You are a wonderful angel!" Shigure cried and, overcome with relief and gratitude, it would seem, he jumped into Tohru's arms. There was a deafening POFF sound, and Tohru found herself hugging a tall, dark-haired stranger.

...

Moral of today's story: Look before you leap.


	9. on emotional IQs

CHAPTER 9  
_In which the dog performs an experiment, the princess loses her breath,  
and the dojo is closed. _

"Oh!" Tohru cried, letting go of the stranger at once, her eyes wide and face burning red. "I'm so sorry!"

"Shigure..." cautioned Yuki in an extremely frightening voice. It was all icy and threatening, and was that frost forming in his general direction?

"Ah... no… it's my fault," Shigure said sheepishly, and Tohru recognized his voice.

It didn't take long to explain the curse to Tohru after Shigure had transformed into a human right in front of her eyes.

"Our family has a tendency to get cursed," Shigure began sadly.

"A lot," Kyo added grumpily.

And then they cited several examples, including their current and most obvious one of being animals. At the end of their tales of woe, Tohru admitted that their curse of being cursed a lot was a bit odd.

"But not very," she added quickly.

After all, if you had worked for the sort of people that Tohru had worked for in the past—the vampire, the mad scientist, and the narcissistic king—you too would find this curse on the mild side of oddness.

"Besides," Tohru said, "it's not your fault that you were cursed."

At that point, Shigure transformed back into a dog.

"It lasted longer this time," Shigure mused. "Maybe I should try it again."

"Don't you dare!" Kyo shouted, but too late. Shigure had already bounded into Tohru's arms again.

POFF!

"Shigure, stop harassing her," Yuki said disapprovingly.

"But I'm just trying to break the--" Shigure the man began before:

POOF!

"That was a lot shorter duration," Shigure the dog said sadly.

Kyo glared at Shigure for Tohru's sake while Tohru just looked somewhat bewildered. Each POOF and POFF came with it's own smallish explosion, after all, and Tohr's hair was now stuck up and around her face like Sonic the Hedgehog's spikes if Sonic the Hedgehog were a brunette instead of blue.

"The length of time we have transformed into a human must be arbitrary," Yuki said.

Tohru smiled anxiously, completely unsure of how she was supposed to act. Yuki noticed and gave her a brief smile before turning back to Shigure.

"Anyway, you should apologize to Miss Housekeeper for jumping on her like that."

"Oh no!" Tohru said emphatically. "It wasn't a big deal. I mean, now you know a little bit more about the curse, right? Really, it wasn't any trouble at all!"

"See? It wasn't any trouble at all," Shigure said.

"She was just being nice," Kyo argued.

"No, really, it wasn't a problem!"

"Even so…" Shigure said, looking almost half-serious. Almost.

Shigure bowed graciously in his dog form, meaning he bent his forelegs so his chin rested on the ground.

"I should apologize," he said in a very humble voice indeed. "Sorry for that. I should of asked."

"Really, it was okay!" Tohru insisted. She's gone from somewhat bewildered to adamantly frazzled, especially with her hair going in all directions. Yuki found himself smiling very slightly, and for a moment, he was surprised.

Shigure's almost half-serious face disappeared quickly into a goofy grin.

"Oh good," he said. "Let's have dinner, then!"

---

_Meanwhile, on top of a mountain oh so very far away: _

The princess was resting up against a tree, her shoulders heaving as she tried to catch her breath.

Note: This shouldn't be taken literally—the princess was not chasing after her breath in the mountains. Catching one's breath is a figure of speech that means that one has over-exerted one's self and must pause in order for one's lungs to take in the desired amount of oxygen needed by one's body.

It was around sunset, and it was truly impressive that the princess had gotten so far in a day when it usually took most people a total of eight. But, hey! Who was she to complain? Princess Kagura, though tired and sore from the day, nonetheless straightened up and clenched her fists at her sides.

"I've traveled so far," she said out loud to herself, "and it's only a little bit farther to the Mystical Dojo where my beloved Kyo waits! I can't get tired now, not when I'm so close!"

And with that, Kagura took a total of three steps to the gates of the Mystical Dojo and knocked.

"Hello?" Kagura called in a saccharine, sugary voice. Kagura was one of the few people who could sweet talk without ever getting a cavity.

A little window in the gate (huh? How'd that get there) opened outward and almost smacked the princess in the head. Luckily, though, it didn't. A young man with white and black spiky hair poked his head out and looked around. His name was Hatsuharu.

"Who knocked on the door?" Hatsuharu asked.

"I did," Kagura answered.

"Didn't you see the notice?"

"What notice?"

"The notice."

Kagura looked around herself and again asked, "What notice? I didn't notice a notice anywhere."

"It's not anywhere, it's right here, see?" Hatsuharu said, poking a hand out the window to point at a random part of the gate.

"I do not see a notice there," Kagura replied after a long pause, during which a breeze arose out of nowhere and carelessly tossed several flower petals around her and gave Kagura's hair a nicely tousled appearance.

"It's not supposed to be there. It's supposed to be here," Hatsuharu said emphatically.

"I do not see it here or there," Kagura replied, shaking her head. "In fact, I do not see it anywhere."

"You don't?" Hatsuharu asked.

"No. I do not."

Hatsuharu seemed to consider this for a while.

"Well… yeah… I guess that's why…" he said to himself in a musing sort of way. Then, to Kagura, he said, "Just a moment, I'll be right back."

With that, he disappeared inside the gate and closed the shutter. Kagura waited patiently for him outside, unconsciously whistling her interpretive jazz song from that morning. She'd only gotten to the eighth verse when the Hatsuharu popped the shutter open again. It missed Kagura for a second time, luckily, but it accidentally smacked into a busy little bee.

Well, that busy little bee was very upset about it and went home to write a very angry letter, only she never sent it because the next day, she was crowned queen, and when one is crowned queen one sometimes forgets about the angry letter one wrote.

Anyway, Hatsuharu opened the shutter and stuck his head and arm out. There was a sign written in fresh paint that he hung on a nail just below the window. He then nodded smartly at Kagura and pulled himself back inside the gate, shutting the shutter behind him.

Kagura leaned forward and read the hastily scrawled notice.

"Knocker out of order. Please ring."

Kagura huffed and looked around herself again, and this time, she noticed a bell-pull hanging just left of the window. It looked suspiciously like a donkey tail with a giant pink bow, but, well, martial arts masters had never been especially known for their taste in the bell-pull department.

Kagura pulled at it tentatively and heard a ringer go off inside the gate.

"That's more like it," Hatsuharu said as he, for the third time, opened the shutter. "Can I help you?"

"Yes," Kagura said, smiling sweetly. A few birds sang tunefully in the background, and the sunlight broke through the clouds to position the princess in spotlight. It had evidently been cloudy earlier. Funny how you don't notice these things.

Kagura began:

"Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered--" (meaning there were none to tell or count) "—I have walked my way here to the Mystical Dojo beyond the Relatively Dark Forest to find my beloved Kyo. Would you let me in?"

"I'd like to help you, but the dojo is closed," Hatsuharu said.

"What?"

Hatsuharu leaned his elbows on the windowsill and explained.

"You see, the master is off saving the world again. At least he was when I last heard from him, but he might be on a quest for spiritual enlightenment now, since he mentioned that he hadn't had one for a while. In any case, he's not here, and his apprentice is gone, too, so that just leaves me."

Something inside Kagura's heart began to boil.

How dare he not be here…

Something in Kagura's eyes began to glint.

She'd trekked so far… just to see him…

Hatsuharu inclined his face towards her.

"Are you feeling all right?" he asked, sounding concerned.

Just… to see him… and he wasn't even—

Then suddenly, something inside the princess's heart wrenched.

"Oh!" she cried, placing her hands over her heart.

"What?" Hatsuharu asked, sounding alarmed in a subdued sort of way.

"Darling Kyo! You must have gone back to the castle in search of me," she said, eyes losing their glint to sparkle in the sunlight like water in the ocean on a particularly bright day. Then the wind went suddenly cold, and little blue flames popped up around her when she added, "At least, you better have."

...

Moral of today's story: Never play with a woman's heart. Ever.


	10. on proper etiquette or lack thereof

CHAPTER 10  
_In which the fairy godmother-in-training packs her bags, picks up a hitch-hiker,  
and the mouse receives a letter._

The following is a more extensive explanation of Tohru Honda's keys than was given in Chapter Four:

When working in the garden of the Labyrinth, Tohru received a set of keys from her employer, the Goblin King.

The first key was made out of ivory. Its head was carved out to look like a skull, and the actual unlocking part was made to look like a bone. The Goblin King told Tohru that if she used it on any door outside of the Labyrinth, that door would lead her to the entrance. If used on a door inside the Labyrinth, that door would unlock and lead her to the next room or hallway.

The second key was carved out of beech wood, and it kept its form of a knobbly-looking twig. This key, when used on any door at all, would open that door up into a massive supply closet. Tohru had kept all of her garden supplies and broom there, and it saved so much time and energy from having to tote all of her equipment everywhere she went.

The third key was made out of iron. It was pounded into the shape of a rose with a smooth stem.

"This key is the most precious," the Goblin King had said, holding it in his fingers as if it was made of delicate lace. "This key will always take you home."

---

"Hey, Tohru!" Uo called, standing in the doorway of Tohru's room. "Weren't you looking for these?"

Tohru, who had been sitting in the middle of her bed neatly packing her clothes into a suitcase at her knees, looked up. From Uo's fingers, Tohru could see the three keys the Goblin King had given her almost a year ago.

"Oh, you found them!" Tohru said happily. "I'm so glad!"

"Hana found them when she was making sure all of the windows were locked," Uo said, walking across the floor to hand the keys over to Tohru.

It had been a full week since Shigure had hired Tohru, but it wasn't until now that Tohru would be moving into a room at the house. This week, after all, had been full of final exams in Tohru's university, and the three Sohmas had been very understanding that Tohru was very busy with studies.

"You can start next week when it's all over," Shigure said amiably as he and Yuki escorted her to the door after dinner seven days prior. Kyo had disappeared to the roof, Tohru was told.

"Are you sure it's okay?" Tohru asked.

"We'll be fine," Yuki had assured. "You've made enough food tonight to feed us for a week."

Note: If you recall in chapter nine, Tohru found a secret passage in the kitchen, and inside the secret passage, she had found a rice-cooker and a bag of rice. When Tohru was serving dinner that evening, she noticed that though she piled rice on each of the Sohma's plates, the amount of rice in the rice-cooker didn't seem to get smaller. Shigure finally remembered that it was an almost-bottomless rice-cooker given to him by a fan of his books.

Now that the end of exams had come, Tohru was packing her bags to take to Shigure's house, and, with the help of Uo and Hana, preparing the house for her absence the rest of the summer.

"So you'll be working all summer at this house?" Uo said. Tohru nodded.

"Yes, but he says I can take weekends off, except that I'll have to leave them food since they can't make any themselves," Tohru said, closing the suitcase with a snap.

"Why can't they make any themselves?" Hana asked as she materialized in the doorway behind Uo.

Tohru deadpanned.

"Ah… um… they were transformed into animals," Tohru said, which was true enough.

"Animals?" Hana asked, her ears pricked as she floated noiselessly across the room to sit next to Tohru on the bed.

Tohru smiled nervously. She knew that since Uo was a witch and Hana was an electric girl, they wouldn't think that being turned into an animal as too strange. Any first-level magic-user could do that. What Tohru chose not to say, however, was that this transformation was only a part of a long list of other curses. She didn't want Uo and Hana to worry that Tohru might be in danger of being cursed herself.

"Animals, huh?" Uo said, putting her hands on her waist. "That's annoying. It's so hard to find a curse-breaker for that, you know? Even the MUCC hasn't come up with a standard spell yet."

"Yes," Hana agreed, taking a skirt from out of Tohru's suitcase and refolding it. "One has to take many conditions into consideration to break a curse like that."

Tohru almost sighed with relief. It didn't seem like either Hana or Uo thought anything was strange about her employers at all.

It was almost four in the evening when Tohru said her good-byes to Uo and Hana. She then proceeded to carry her broomstick and suitcase outside on the roof, put on her flying goggles, and sit on her broom.

"High ho Dusty!" she cried, and with that, she lifted up into the air and zipped through the cloudless sky towards the Relatively Dark Forest.

It wasn't after five minutes of flight when Tohru felt a sudden extra weight dragging the speed of her broom. Looking around from the front to the bristles in the back, Tohru saw that a rather large post owl had decided that he rather liked hitching a ride rather than flying himself. Tohru didn't mind, however, and indeed gave the owl a cheery smile before turning back to the front of the broom.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not going very far!" she called over the wind. The owl hooted vaguely in reply.

Yuki was sitting in the rose garden again when he saw Tohru touchdown to the ground with a suitcase in her hand. He would have said hello, but at that moment, he also noticed that an owl was perched comfortably on the still floating broom as Tohru dismounted. Even though Yuki had mighty mouse skillz and could take on Kyo in his cat form, his instincts told him nonetheless that it wasn't a very good idea to draw attention to himself at the moment.

The owl held out his claw, and on his leg, a letter had been attached with a royal violet ribbon.

"Oh," Tohru said, taking the letter and reading the address. "Yes, I'll be sure to give it to him. Thank you very much."

The owl ruffled his feathers and, with three powerful beats of his wings, took to the air. Tohru watched it for awhile before she grabbed the broom handle and began walking down the garden path.

Even though the owl hadn't spotted Yuki with his large eyes, Tohru did.

"Yuki!" she said happily, making a beeline for him. "It's nice to see you again. I hope everything was okay this week."

"Yes, it was," Yuki said politely. "Thank you."

Tohru set her suitcase on the ground and sat on it, and after placing the broom on her lap, she handed Yuki the letter.

"This came for you in the mail," she said as Yuki took it from her. After nibbling the envelope open, he read the letter out loud:

"Dearest and most wonderful Prince Yuki, The four princesses of Cloud 9 wish to visit His Highness this coming Friday in hopes of taking said Highness's hand in marriage. With love, Motoko Minagawa, Minami Kinoshita, Mia Yamagishi, and Mai Gotou."

There was a moment here where Yuki stared at the letter, and Tohru stared at Yuki.

Tohru was the first to interrupt the silence.

"You're a prince!" she exclaimed.

Meep! Was she supposed to bow? Oh, no, wasn't she supposed to curtsy? But she'd never curtsied before in front of royalty! Actually, come to think of it, she'd never curtsied before, period. Oh dear! Wasn't she supposed to have curtsied in the presence of the Goblin King when she was working for him? Then again, he was pleased enough whenever she looked frazzled. Maybe she was supposed to look frazzled in front of royalty instead. Well... no, that didn't make any sense, but-

"Miss Honda," Yuki asked in concern, letting the letter drop, "you look a little frazzled, are you all right?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you were a prince!" Tohru said apologetically, trying to jump up to her feet and bow and curtsy all at the same time.

Yuki shook his head. "That's okay. I-"

Tohru fell down.

"I'm okay!" she said before Yuki could say anything. She popped back up to her feet, smiling. Yuki blinked several times before deciding to try a nervous smile.

"Really Miss Honda, it's okay. I don't want you to bow or curtsy." He patted her foot with his paw. "Please don't act differently at all. Just be yourself, okay?"

"Oh," Tohru said. After a short silence, she blushed slightly.

"I'm sorry if I overreacted," she added.

"No it's all right. I probably should have told you earlier, but..." Yuki trailed off and looked at the paper. "I had hoped that this wouldn't come up at all."

"What do you mean?" Tohru asked.

Yuki looked up at her sheepishly.

"Well, this is the year I'm supposed to find a princess to marry, but how am I supposed to do that when I..." he trailed off and looked away.

"Never mind, Miss Honda," he said after a moment. "You don't need to worry about it."

---

After finding Shigure in the kitchen and confirming that the groceries she had ordered yesterday had arrived that afternnon, as she had been too busy the past week to go shopping herself, Tohru set her suitcase down on the bed in the room Shigure had designated as her own for the summer. She felt a little nervous, though, because the room felt more like a hotel room than one that someone lived in, but she figured that this feeling would pass. She hadn't even been here for five minutes!

Deciding that the best way to get familiar with the house was to explore it, Tohru quietly stepped out of her room and closed the door behind her.

And who should be outside her door other than Kyo?

"Kyo!" she said, a little taken aback but pleased all the same. "Good morning."

Kyo, also taken aback by the sudden appearance of the new housekeeper, replied, "Morning," in a surlier voice than he had intended.

"I… er…" Tohru said, trying to avoid an awkward silence, "I hope you've been well?"

Kyo bristled.

"Oh! I'm sorry," Tohru said quickly. "I didn't mean to pry or anything-- I just wondered how you've been, but you don't have to tell me if you don't want. I mean, you could tell me, I wouldn't mind at all, but you don't have to feel like you should because I asked. I was just exploring the house, anyway, so… I mean… yes, well, it was nice seeing you again."

Tohru said this all very fast, and before Kyo could figure out how to reply, or even figure out if he was supposed to, she was already hurrying off down the hall.

…:…

Shigure Sohma's house, Tohru discovered, was very, very large. It was so large, in fact, that Tohru found several rooms that didn't seem to have any purpose, and several rooms that had guest beds, but again felt like they were more like hotel rooms than something friends spent time in. The hallways were also very confusing, and Tohru got lost at some point and ended up back in the entrance hall without really knowing how she got there. She would need to ask Shigure or someone to help draw a map of the house.

Once she had finished her self-guided tour of the house, it was time to make dinner: horseradish-crusted salmon with mashed potatoes, sautéed green beans and carrots, and peach cobbler with French vanilla ice cream. She kept the peach cobbler in the oven so it would keep warm until she could serve it along with the ice cream scoop so the dessert would be warm, but it would also be easier to scoop out ice cream.

She'd been thinking all week about how she should serve Yuki's food. Kyo and Shigure were easy, since they were large enough to eat from a regular-sized plates, but Yuki could probably fit on his plate and still have room enough to do roller skate tricks. He could also have a nice-sized kiddie pool in a regular-sized bowl, and he could comfortably curl up and take an afternoon nap in a regular-sized cup.

It had taken some creative thinking, but eventually, Tohru came up with these solutions: she could serve food on a silver penny, soup in a metal root beer bottle cap, and drinks in a stainless steel thimble. After some more consideration, she cut a toothpick in half as makeshift chopsticks, although she still wasn't sure how to make a spoon. She'd have to come up with that later.

...

Moral of today's story: Alas! One cannot bow and curtsy at the same time.


	11. on the scientific method

CHAPTER 11  
_In which the dog has a brilliant idea, the fairy godmother-in-training  
puts it into action, and the head of the Sohma family… _

Torhu, Yuki and Shigure ate together at the table (while Kyo was up on the roof again). Yuki was telling Shigure about the letter, and he wondered what they should do.

"Yes, yes," Shigure said between mouthfuls of mashed potatoes. "That is a predicament. We can't let them know you're cursed."

"I know," Yuki said, sounding miserable, "but they're also…" he paused, searching for the right word, "…persistent. I don't think I could convince them to not come."

"We'll have to come up with something," Shigure said.

Tohru, meanwhile, watched their conversation, but she wasn't really paying attention. Rather, she was thinking that it was obvious what Yuki had meant earlier in Chapter 10:

"_Well, this is the year I'm supposed to find a princess to marry, but how am I supposed to do that when I am cursed and look like a [_mouse_]."_

All the same, Tohru somehow felt that there was more to it than just the curse.

"I have an idea!" Shigure exclaimed, interrupting Tohru's thoughts.

---

What Yuki didn't say was, truth be told, he rather liked having an excuse not to marry. But, then again and thanks to a certain someone who will remain nameless until he becomes more important to this story (Ayame…), Yuki knew that the future of his kingdom rested solely on his shoulders, whether these shoulders belonged to a man or mouse. However much he disliked it, he couldn't avoid it, and he definitely couldn't allow the four princesses to know of this curse. If word got out that the Sohmas had a tendency to get cursed (a lot), his chances of marrying would be slim to none.

Note: This is true. Though princesses were now on the lookout for talking frogs as potential princes, not many were aware that a polite talking mouse would also make a good match.

Knowing this, Yuki did the only thing he thought he could do: ask Shigure for help. He didn't want to—heavens only knows what kind of humorous horrors Shigure was capable of—but Yuki saw it as his only hope. At least, he wasn't going to ask Kyo for the obvious reason that Kyo was a bumbling idiot who deserved nothing better than to die by knocking himself out. Yuki had also decided not to ask Tohru, either, since he didn't think the curse should involve her. He didn't trust himself to ask any of the other Sohmas in fear that they would inform… that person Yuki really didn't like who also just happened to be the head of the Sohma family.

(That would be Akito, by the way.)

Just thinking of Akito was enough to send cold shivers from the tips of Yuki's whiskery whisk whiskers down to the end of his whippity whip tail.

Surely, whatever Shigure would think of was infinitely better than the alternatives. Then again…

"This is not going to work," Yuki said after he had gone through the above-mentioned thoughts.

"Of course it will," Shigure said confidently.

"No, it won't," Kyo grumbled.

"Then let me put it this way—what else will?" Shigure asked with incorrigible good humor.

Instead of replying, Yuki and Kyo just scowled.

Shigure's brilliant idea had been this: if he, Yuki and Kyo all dressed up like people, maybe the princesses would be fooled into thinking they were human!

"This is not going to work," Yuki muttered again as Kyo clumsily pulled on a pair of boots on his hind paws. "He still looks like a mangy orange cat."

"And you still look like a half-drowned rat!" Kyo spat.

"Maybe if we gave him a hat," Tohru said, more out of the need to prevent an argument than to help Kyo look more human. She turned and rummaged through the dryer. Ever since Shigure had come up with the idea, Tohru had been working on laundry until all the clothes shrank to the size of a mouse/cat/dog.

"Try this one," she said, holding up a hat with a large feather in it.

"I'm not going to wear a hat," Kyo said irratabley, "and I don't want to wear these boots, either."

"So you prefer running around naked?" Shigure asked with quirked eyebrows.

"I do not run around naked!" Kyo shouted.

"You're not wearing any clothes," Shigure pressed.

"You're not wearing any clothes either!" Kyo shot back. Then he slapped a paw to his forehead, because right then, he realized his argument was not something to say around Shigure Sohma.

Thankfully, though, Shigure chose not to think up another joke with that. Though he could have if he had wanted to. Really.

"Fine, I'll wear the stupid hat," Kyo muttered, teeth clenched.

"Are you sure, Kyo?" Tohru asked anxiously.

"Yes," Kyo said, though his tone of voice sounded more like a 'no.'

"I can try to find another hat," Tohru offered. "Maybe you'll like it better."

"No, I'll wear that one," Kyo said.

"If you don't want to wear a hat," Tohru continued, "I'm sure we can find a way to--"

"Dangit! Just give me the stupid hat!" Kyo shouted.

"Sorry!" Tohru meeped, holding up the hat as if she were trying to hide behind it. That, of course, didn't work, seeing as how the hat could easily fit inside the palm of her hand.

"No, I didn't mean--" Kyo started in a small voice.

"Why are you always so rude?" Yuki said, glaring at Kyo. "Miss Honda is just trying to help."

Kyo would have dearly liked to say something like "Yeah, to help you, rat. I don't have anything to do with this," but Kyo didn't. As much as he liked finding an excuse to start a fight with Yuki, he didn't want Tohru to think he was mad at her.

So, in a rare display of self-discipline, Kyo swallowed his pride and chose not to take Yuki's bait.

Kyo'd get back at him later, anyway.

"I don't mind wearing that hat," Kyo said to Tohru in a subdued voice.

Tohru looked at him for a few seconds before smiling.

"Okay," she said, placing the hat on Kyo's head.

Kyo felt distinctly uncomfortable when he realized Shigure, Yuki and Tohru were all staring at him with scrutinizing expressions.

"Well?" Kyo said impatiently after a minute of "hmms" and "humms" from his audience.

"No," Shigure said sorrowfully, shaking his head. "He still looks like a cat."

"If the trousers, blouse, vest, cufflinks, and boots didn't work," Yuki said darkly, "why would a hat do anything?"

"Maybe if he stood on his hind legs?" Tohru suggested.

"Hey! Since when did I become the guinea pig in this experiment!" Kyo shouted.

"Go ahead and stand up," Shigure ordered.

"What if I don't want to?" Kyo growled.

Shigure grinned toothily.

"What indeed?" Shigure asked, teeth flashing.

Kyo's eyes went as large and round as saucers. It was really something worth seeing.

"Fine," he said loudly, "I'll stand up, but only 'cause I know it won't work."

Kyo then proceeded to stand up with the greatest dignity he could muster, which, unfortunately for him, wasn't much. Even so, the other three gasped.

"By Jove," Shigure exclaimed, "I think we've got it!"

Tohru clapped her hands together. "Shigure! You're a genius!"

"I can't believe it," Yuki said, shaking his head.

"What?" Kyo asked, looking down at himself. He still looked like a cat to him.

"I'll go get a mirror. There was one in the secret passage," Tohru said happily, waltzing hastily out of the laundry room.

"Yes, I think—secret passage? WaitaminuteTohrustop!" Shigure said all in a rush, but too late! She was already outside the room.

Yuki paled slightly. One couldn't tell just by looking at him, what with all the fur, but one would notice the trembling of his whiskers if one looked close enough.

"The mirror?" he asked quietly.

Kyo, who had watched Tohru waltzing out the laundry-room door, now looked over to Yuki, his own whiskers twitching more out of ill-concealed curiosity about the mirror than… whatever that darn mouse was feeling.

Note: To make things perfectly clear, the curiosity Kyo felt as most definitely not out of concern. It was only because Kyo sensed a potential weakness in his adversary. Definitely.

"Well," Shigure said, breaking the sudden silence and scratching his head with his hind leg, "I'm sure a quick glance won't hurt, right?"

Yuki lowered his head slightly.

"Maybe," he murmured doubtfully. "Just a quick glance."

Kyo resolved to take the longest amount of time he could to check out his reflection.

_Meanwhile:_

The castle didn't look much like the lair of an evil villain. There was plenty of sunshine on the grounds, for one. There were trees flowering pink and white in the courtyards, the petals occasionally gracing the ground like spring's version of snow. There was a bird that a-flitted from window to tree or tree to window.

All in all, it looked like a perfectly nice place.

Ah, but looks can be deceiving, can they not?

Looking beyond looks, a casual passerby would notice almost immediately that the place was quiet. Too quiet.

There was no wind that rustled the lacy flowers of the trees.

There were no voices or even whispers coming from the inside.

Even the bird that a-flitted place to place never sang.

At this realization, most casual passersby would at this point become hasty retreaters.

Well, no, I lie. They all became hasty retreaters—the silence was that overwhelming.

This was the room of the evil villain:

There was a lone tower in the north annex of the castle that was accessible only by a winding staircase. One of the former owners had considered installing an elevator to provide access to handicapped visitors, but he had never really gotten around to it.

At the end of the long spiral staircase, there was a room with four windows that faced each one of the cardinal directions, respectively. The inside of the room was practically empty-- the only furniture was a single red pillow. The walls, however were covered in mirrors.

Akito sat in the middle of that room on the single red pillow, his eyes fixed at an unseen point out the North window, his lips chapped and slightly parted. A sudden movement to his left caught his attention, and his eyes snapped clear and focused as he scanned the wall of mirrors.

You've been informed that the Sohmas had a tendency to get cursed. A lot. But if you were to force one single person to live with all the combined curses of the entire family, it still wouldn't compare to the one curse Akito had been given. To make it worse, Akito had been cursed before he was born, and curses like that can never be broken.

Never.

Curses and blessings that are made before a child is born connects too deeply with his or her destiny. If you destroy the curse, you destroy the destiny. Destroy the destiny, and you have a person whose existence is pointless. A person whose existence is pointless turns into something that, for lack of a better phrase, 'shouldn't be.'

Akito stood up shakily from the pillow and shuffled carefully towards the west wall. The silk of his robes whispered softly against the smooth, stone floor and its own folds.

"I knew I saw a mirror here," came a cheerful voice from one of the mirrors as though through water. Akito was unable to hold his delight when he found which mirror the voice came from. He knew it couldn't stay lost forever. He knew it!

This mirror had always been Akito's favorite, but it had been hidden away for the longest time. He had been so angry when he had first discovered that it had so carelessly been misplaced, but no matter. Perhaps there was a chance that Akito could use this mirror again. Perhaps.

The mirror grew larger in size on the wall as Akito watched it, the other mirrors shrinking and shuffling aside to make more room. The mirror on _the other side_ was being carried through a hallway. It was then set before a ginger cat wearing boots and a hat.

"Go ahead, Kyo," came Shigure's voice. Akito could easily recognize Shigure's voice. But the first one he had heard… who owned that voice?

"Why are you making me do this? You could do it yourself," the cat growled. Akito was not impressed by the talking cat (the Sohmas had a tendency to get cursed etc.), but he was intrigued that the voice belonged to Kyo. Kyo was generally not welcomed by most Sohmas.

"Make Yuki do it," Kyo complained.

And especially by Yuki.

"If you have such low self-esteem about your looks, why don't you just admit it," Yuki said in a low voice. He wasn't standing in front of the mirror, it seemed. Pity.

"I do not have low self-esteem!" Kyo snapped.

"Oh, Kyo, don't be embarrassed," said the voice Akito didn't recognize. "You really are cute."

Kyo's face turned an impressive shade of red, more impressive since it was visible through his orange fur.

"I… I… I… I am not cute!" Kyo shouted after trying several I's: one flabbergasted, one shy, one curious, the last defensive. Kyo then stood up on his hind legs and looked in the mirror.

"Holy Mackeral!" he exclaimed. He stood staring at Akito, meaning he was staring at himself in the mirror, then got back on all fours.

"It did work! I looked human!" Kyo continued, astonished.

"I told you it would work," Shigure said proudly. "Now, Tohru, would you please put that mirror back where you found it?"

Tohru?

Tohru…

Akito pulled his eyes away from the mirror. Tohru hadn't been mentioned in the letter he had last received from Hatori. Why hadn't he been told? Hatori wouldn't have forgotten to mention that an outsider was involved with the family, would he?

Akito smirked unpleasantly. Had Akito's influence over his family members weakened so much that they no longer felt the need to tell him?

Akito's first impulse was to send a letter to Hatori, telling him to erase this Tohru's memory. But perhaps… perhaps…

Perhaps Akito could use this girl to his advantage.

Perhaps.

...

Moral of today's story: Sometimes it's better to try stupid theories than to ignore them completely.


	12. on the fluidity of time

CHAPTER 12  
_In which Tohru learns of the Sohma's daily schedules, and maybe a little bit more._

The week passed quickly enough, and during this time, Tohru had tidied up the house so much that it was hardly recognizable by the owners. It was now Thursday, the day before the princesses of Cloud 9 were scheduled to visit.

6:32 AM  
Wake up

When the alarm clock went off at exactly 6:32 that morning (the clock was two minutes fast), Tohru only squeezed her eyes shut tighter and buried her face deeper into her pillow. This sort of reaction is actually quite common not only to her, but to many people and fairy godmothers-in-training, and it results from a mistaken belief that if one ignores the incessant beep beep beeping for long enough, it will go away. Unfortunately, it didn't. Indeed, the beeping only grew more irritating.

6:33 AM  
Get out of bed

Tohru finally gave up on trying to get back to sleep and got out of bed, stretched, and walked across the room to turn off the alarm clock. If she were any more awake, she might have noticed that her blankets were wrapped around her waist, but she didn't, so she dragged them across the floor with her.

6:34 AM  
Shower, dress, brush teeth

Self explanatory. Tohru also took a minute to make the bed again.

6:47 AM  
Make coffee and breakfast

Tohru crept down the stairs to the kitchen and, after setting it up, turned on the coffeemaker. She then grabbed a box of cereal and a bowl from the cupboard, a milk carton from the refrigerator, and prepared breakfast. A few minutes later, Shigure came into the kitchen. They talked pleasantly about a dream Shigure had, one with dinosaur bones, while he lapped up a bowl of black coffee.

6:55 AM  
Shigure watches the sunrise

Shigure left the bowl as close to the sink as he could manage by nudging it across the floor with his nose before he left to watch the sunrise on the back porch. There was a window over the kitchen sink, so Tohru watched the sunrise in relation to the Relatively Dark Forest while she washed the dishes, meaning she didn't actually see the sun, but she could see the sunlight and shadows shift.

6:57 AM  
Shigure disappears

Note: Not literally. Although Shigure had a mysterious disappearing charm cast on him once, it had been a long time ago, and Hatori had been very insistent on the matter that someone must find a cure for his curse, fast. So, in the end, Shigure had only been invisible for a day. But what a day it had been!

Torhu had often wondered her first week as to where Shigure disappeared to. It was only yesterday, Wednesday, that she had found out, when she'd been chasing the last of the dust bunnies through the hallway with her broom. She happened to stop at the doorway of Shigure's room and heard the clickitty clack of an old-fashioned typewriter.

She'd been meaning to ask him what he was typing, but she hadn't quite figured out how to approach him about it.

7:00 AM  
Uh... hmm...

After washing and drying the dishes for the morning, Tohru wasn't really sure what to do next with herself. Kyo and Yuki didn't usually show up until lunch, and Tohru herself had run out of chores since the brief scuttle yesterday with the few remaining followers of Mr. Evil Blue Dust Bunny of Death! Death and Destruction!

What to do...

Of course! Tohru thought suddenly. She could visit the garden today! Wasn't that the reason she came to work here in the first place? She had just been so busy with everything else the past few days that she hardly had the chance to even glance at the rose garden, much less admire it.

Tohru hurried to the front door of the house and, after slipping into her shoes, went outside, still marveling over the fact that it had taken her so long to think of the garden when it seemed so obvious to her now.

The garden seemed to be compromised mostly of red roses, but there were a few scattered pale pinks, golden yellows, and sunset oranges. Tohru passed by them, gently brushing the petals with her fingertips. As she expected, the petals felt soft a supple, and the branches bent back under the slight pressure she applied.

"Beautiful," Tohru whispered to herself.

Tohru gently pulled the face of a particularly radiant red rose towards her, and she was astonished when the stem snapped abruptly between her fingers.

"Oh no! I broke it!" Tohru exclaimed, almost dropping the blossom in surprised guilt. "I'm sorry, little rose, I didn't mean to hurt you! I didn't know I pulled you so hard! I--"

Tohru paused and stared at the rose, then at the branch it had snapped off.

"But... I didn't really pull that hard at all," Tohru said to herself, slightly baffled. "And yet... if I didn't... why did it snap?"

Tohru reached her hand out to touch the severed end of the branch, but it was at that moment that she was attacked by a sudden streak of orange fur!

7:35 AM – 11:30 AM  
Kyo practices his kitty cat kung fu techniques

If Tohru hadn't been so preoccupied with the roses, she would have noticed that Kyo had been out in the garden the entire time. If Kyo hadn't been so preoccupied with his kitty cat kung fu, he might have noticed Tohru had joined him in the garden when she did.

Actually, truth be told, Kyo did notice Tohru come out of the house, but ever since he had started his early-morning training, he'd been seeing everything with Yuki's face on it. (Take that! Where's your condescending smile now, punk?) He had simply thought that Tohru was another Yuki mirage.

And so, from inattentiveness on both parties, Kyo ended up kitty-karate chopping Tohru's ankle.

"Uh..." said Kyo when he realized he had just kitty-karate chopped Tohru's ankle.

"Er..." Tohru said when she realized the same thing.

They stared at each other for a good, hard minute.

Then Kyo's fur puffed out.

"What in the blue blazes are you doing out here?" he asked accusingly.

"Er... sorry," Tohru said, not knowing what else she could say. "I was just..." And here, Tohru's eyes filled up with tears.

"What? What are you--" Kyo began, but then he remembered had just kind of sort of maybe karate chopped Tohru's ankle.

"Oh," Kyo began, trying to decide what he was supposed to do now.

"It's okay. It hardly hurts at all, really," Tohru said quickly, smiling through a pained face. "Well, maybe a little. I mean... maybe a lot. Or it seems like it right now. I'll just go inside and get some ice for it or--"

While she was saying this, she'd already been limping towards the house. She'd barely gotten a few steps when her ankle, the one that Kyo had kind of sort of maybe attacked, gave in under her weight, and came crashing to the ground.

"I'm okay!" she called, as if Kyo would believe her.

"Stay here," Kyo ordered in what he thought was a surly voice, but wasn't really. "I'll go get ice for you."

Tohru looked scandalized.

"Oh no," she said, starting to get back to her feet. "I don't want to trouble you more than I already--"

"Be quiet and sit down," Kyo barked. "I can get the stupid ice myself, so don't go anywhere."

"Really, it's not so bad. I--"

"Sit down," Kyo snapped. "I said I was going to get the stupid ice, so I'm going to get the stupid ice, and you're going to wait. Here. Without moving that ankle."

Tohru obediently sat back down on the ground.

"Okay," she agreed.

"And you..." Kyo began, then stopped.

"Okay then," he finished. He stood looking at Tohru for an awkward second longer, and then he turned an shuffled self-consciously to the house on his four fluffy cat paws.

It was really an impressive feat for Kyo to get the ice, and probably really entertaining for anyone watching. In the end, though, he managed just fine and was only gone for a few minutes.

Because Tohru's ankle hurt too much to move even with the ice pack, Tohru had to stay outside for the rest of the morning. Kyo stayed with her because, well, not because he was concerned or anything, if that's what you were thinking. Kyo just needed to practice his martial arts, was all.

It didn't hurt that he had a captive audience as Tohru cheered him on while he practice.

"That's really amazing!" she said, clapping her hands together.

Kyo mumbled something that might've been a "yeah right" or "of course", but it was hard for Tohru to decipher.

11:30 PM – 1:15 PM  
Yuki wakes up; lunch

It was rather lucky that around the time Tohru usually made lunch, the pain in her ankle had dropped off into a dull, barely noticeably ache. She made it to the house without any mishaps – unless you count the two or three times she almost tripped over Kyo, who kept asking, "Are you sure you're okay?" while he threaded back and forth between her ankles.

By the time Tohru had prepared lunch, Shigure and Yuki had joined Kyo at the table.

"Hello, Shigure, Yuki," Tohru said as she set the food on the table in front of them and sat down herself.

"Good morning," Yuki said sleepily, seemingly oblivious that it was actually the afternoon.

Shigure might've said hello back, but his nose was buried in his food.

After lunch, Yuki was far more awake and offered to help Tohru was the dishes. He had done so before, so Tohru knew better than to try and refuse his help. Of course, Yuki could only handle his own dishes as utensils as everything else was so large compared to him being mouse-sized, but Tohru enjoyed talking with him.

And, truth be told, he looked adorable with soap bubbles balanced on his whiskers, especially when he didn't realize they were there.

1:15 PM – 5:30 PM  
Relaxation

Kyo had disappeared directly after dessert, which was odd considering that he usually picked a fight with Yuki at this time. Yuki seemed rather taken aback when Kyo announced, very loudly, that he was going to take a walk, but Yuki wasn't about to complain about the change in scheduling.

Tohru decided not to work on the garden that afternoon as the temperature had risen very quickly that morning, and her ankle was still a little sore. Shigure did, however, let her go through his bookshelves upstairs, and she spent the rest of the afternoon reading with him and Yuki in the living room.

Around four, Kyo came back from his walk and entered the living room.

"Has anyone--" he began, causing the other three to look up from their respective books, but Kyo never finished his sentence. He fell away in a dead faint in the middle of a sunspot on the floor created by the window.

"Kyo!" Tohru exclaimed, jumping to her feet, her book falling to the ground with a clunk.

"He's probably just exhausted from the walk," Shigure said easily. "Let him sleep."

5:30 PM – 9:30 PM  
Playing games

Yuki had given up on his book and was now concentrating on the crossword puzzle in that day's delivered newspaper. Tohru finished a letter to Uo and was about to start one for Hana when Kyo woke up with a start.

Shigure looked mildly intrigued. Kyo had waken up just as the sun spot disappeared with the last of the sunset.

With everyone now awake, Tohru suggested they play a game.

"What kind of game?" Shigure asked eagerly.

"A fighting game," Kyo replied immediately, his eyes shooting over towards Yuki.

"I hardly think that's what Miss Honda had in mind," Yuki said coolly, still trying to come up with a seven-letter word for 'mean'.

"I didn't really have anything in mind when I said it," Tohru said sheepishly.

"How about Pictionary?" Shigure suggested.

"How are we supposed to draw?" Kyo and Yuki asked in unison.

"Monopoly?" Shigure tried.

"Momiji stole all the money last time we played," Yuki said.

"Ah yes, I remember now," Shigure said.

"I know!" Tohru said excitedly. "How about cards?"

"Poker!" Shigure cried.

"Slap Jack!" Kyo argued.

"What do you think, Miss Honda?" Yuki asked.

"Er..." Tohru said. "Does anybody know how to play Rich Man Poor Man?"

9:30 PM

After Kyo's several humiliating defeats, Shigure's several "I win again!" exclamations, one surprised "I won?" from Yuki, and, in all cases, Tohru's "hooray!" for the winner, the players decided in a three to one vote that they should stop playing, with the dissenting vote from Kyo, who was still very determined to beat Yuki once.

Shigure talked Tohru into making a late night snack, and after that, Tohru decided to go to bed. After all, the four princesses were supposed to be coming tomorrow, and she needed to get up extra early to go shopping for food.

"Good night, Tohru," Shigure said as she slipped out of the living room.

"Good night, Miss Honda," Yuki called after her.

"Good night," Tohru said, waving to them both sleepily. She hadn't realized until just now that she was very tired.

Tohru had just reached the stairs when she heard someone clearing his throat behind her. She turned and saw Kyo standing a few feet off.

"Look, about today," Kyo started before Tohru could say anything. "I just wanted to say... you know... you're ankle..." and here, Kyo rubbed his forepaw behind his ear, "s... sorry about that."

"Oh, it's okay," Tohru said, smiling. "My ankle is feeling a lot better now, so don't worry about it."

"Yeah, okay," Kyo said.

"I'll see you in the morning, Tohru said, and, still smiling, she turned and climbed up the stairs to her room.

Tohru's bedtime schedule was much simpler than her morning routine – she simply changed into her pajamas and brushed her teeth. The only trouble came from crashing into the side of her bed after she had turned the lights in her room out. After that, though, when she was curled up snugly under the bed sheets, Tohru closed her eyes and thought about her day.

It was a good day, she decided, and fell asleep.

...

Moral of today's smile: Time stops for no one,  
especially when it involves alarm clocks at 6:32 in the morning.


	13. on getting good directions without GPS

_An Abbreviated Description of Fafaraway, found on page 146 of __Encyclopedia, Brown Edition:_

Fafaraway is roughly the shape of a sock (which explains why shoe-styled houses were so popular in the 70s) with a large hole in the toe-- the large hole being Beagle's Bay. It's northern border is shared with Lontymago, the western with Onceuponatime. The southern and eastern borders, or the heel and toe of the sock, are surrounded by water.

Within the borders, Fafaraway contains a mountain range extending from north to south along the border with Lontymago, with numerous rivers crisscrossing their way to through the Little House Plains, which fills up the eastern tube part of the sock and part of the heel, past the Enchanted Forest, filling up the rest of the land except for large patches of cities, and into the ocean.

The Enchanted Forest, reaching from the northernmost tip between the plains and the mountains and extending down to Beagle's Bay, is divided into five sections: Green Forest; Dimwood Forest; Relatively Dark Forest; Deep, Dark Forest; and Impossibly Black Forest. All forests are aptly named, except, perhaps, for Impossibly Black Forest. The trees in that section of the Enchanted Forest actually glow very brightly, and they contribute to the port at Beagle's Bay and save the coastal towns in that area from having to build any lighthouses at all.

Fafaraway consists mainly of city-states, some with kings, some with emperors, some with democracies, and some with blue plaid elephants, but all pay allegiance to Fable, the capitol of Fafaraway. Fable only interferes with other city-state governments when conflict arises between two or more city-states or between city-states and foreign countries. By and large, though, Fafaraway is a peaceful country.

Capitol: Fable  
Major city-states (starting with largest population): Hogsmeade, Emerald City, Corus, Spare Oom, Kaibara

CHAPTER 14 A  
_In which a tree and a princess exchange introductions,  
fish can fly, and Chapter 13, because of certain superstitions, is skipped._

Before the main storyline continues, the reader shall be informed of all the players' positions.

Princess Kagura was lost. Yes... very lost. Convinced that Kyo was already back at her castle waiting for her, she had been heading back home. As is the nature of Enchanted Forests, if one does not stay on the road, the trees around one tend to shift about until one doesn't know where one is at all anymore. All Kagura could tell was that she was now somewhere in the depths of the Deep, Dark Forest, where all the trees looked shadowy and sinister.

Note: This type of tree, with its unique black bark and black leaves, was biologically engineered by Dr. Evil – evil genius extraordinaire. Though the tree breathes in CO2 like all normal plants, it breathes out both oxygen and H2O in its gaseous form. Since the temperature of this particular forest was a constant 52 degrees Fahrenheit, the water condenses into a thick fog. This fog protects the trees from potential herbivores by driving them away by its extreme creepiness factor. Dr. Evil, evil genius extraordinaire, won second place in a local science fair for his creation. Incidentally, Tohru had planted this sort of tree near the Translvanian's castle.

Princess Kagura was lost lost lost. But was she scared? Frightened? Terrified that she may be lost forever in a dismal, shadowy existence of high humidity?

No, not really.

"Don't worry, my dearest, darling Kyo!" Kagura sang in her oh-so melodious princess voice. "My heart shall find a path to you!"

To prove her point, Kagura closed her eyes and started walking in the direction she KNEW was right.

She promptly ran into a tree.

Was Kagura embarrassed by this? Self-conscious? Doubtful? Humbled that maybe love, when faced against cold, hard facts and geography, didn't really have the best sense of direction?

Nope.

"You shall not stand between my love and me, foul tree!" Kagura told the tree in a voice of self-confidence and mild irritation.

"..." said the tree in apologetic silence.

Kagura, satisfactorily mollified, nodded smartly and continued on her merry way…

And just as promptly ran into shadowy man in a sinister-looking cloak. Now, if this had been a normal guy instead of a wizard, or perhaps if her were in a better mood, or if he wasn't just a little, ya know… evil…

But, good evening Miss Fortune, the man was actually a wizard in a terrible mood with evil tendencies, and when pure, sweet, innocent Kagura bumped into his rather immovable and unyielding chest, his mood became more terrible.

"I am very evil and sinister!" cried the wizard very loudly and very angrily, whirling around to face Kagura, "and I don't appreciate you running into me, so I shall turn you into a toad!" and with a twirl of his wand, he cried, "Fremptuelous!"

Note: I really just made that word up. I didn't want to put in the real word, you see, because I know at least one of you readers would try to use it on a friend, and believe you me, friends don't like being turned into toads as much as you think they might. Also, "fremptuelous" sounds much spiffier than the actual spell.

And then there was a mighty FLASH! and a mighty POOF! and some mighty sparkles and stray ticker tape, but Kagura had not turned into a toad.

Note (extended): And anyway, the evil wizard also said the spell incorrectly.

Instead, the wizard had disappeared, and there was a very disgruntled-looking toad wearing a sinister-looking but also very cute cloak standing where the wizard had been just a few seconds before.

"Well," said the toad, "That didn't go the way I planned."

Kagura, who thought it was very rude of the wizard to take off like that before she could ask for directions, decided to ask the toad instead, because it must have been fate's intervention to help reunite Kyo and herself together again.

"Excuse me, Mr. Toad, but could you tell me where I could find the forest path again?"

The toad looked up at her and then pointed to the left.

"Last I saw, it was over thereabouts," he said.

"Hoorah! Thank you!" Kagura said, and she bounded off in that direction.

Meanwhile, the toad pocketed his wand, which now resembled a toothpick, into the folds of his cloak.

"Grandma was right," he sighed to himself. "I really ought to give up the life of evil and settle down with a nice girl."

---

Hatori, despite his best attempts to find a counter curse, was still a seahorse. It was most inconvenient to get any work done for the past couple of weeks, and the tussle with the post owl hadn't much improved his mood much. Really, he ought to tell his clients to stop sending letters by owl post, only Hatori would then have to hire a post owl to tell them so. Catch 22.

The only thing that Hatori categorized as tolerable was that he had by now learned how to move about the house without: 1) water, 2) Momiji's assistance, or 3) flopping uselessly on the floor. Instead, if Hatori flapped his flippers reallyreallyreally fast, he could hover like a humming bird about two inches off the ground. It'd only taken him a few hours to master that technique, and then a couple more to move forwards, backwards, and side to side. It'd taken him a full day to learn how to turn around without accidentally flipping himself over.

Today was Thursday, and because it was Thursday, and because Momiji had no trouble whatsoever in moving around on his own, Hatori had sent Momiji to school that morning. Hatori had decided to use the time he himself couldn't work and the time Momiji was at school to practice his aerodynamic maneuverings. Today, Hatori decided, he would attempt to travel a distance longer than the living room.

Hatori didn't have to bother with the door because, like Shigure, he lived in a traditional Japanese home, and the shoji screens were only made of rice paper. It was no trouble at all for Hatori to punch a clean seahorse-shaped hole in the bottom left-hand rectangle of the front wall.

The moment Hatori fluttered outside after making said hole, he was assailed by a flash and flurry of white feathers. Hatori calmly panicked for a moment, certain that it was yet another owl. After several moments of not being eaten, however, Hatori realized that the bird was only, in fact, a homing pigeon. A note was tied to its leg.

Although Hatori was both surprised and grateful that the sender had chosen to use a less aggressive bird, he couldn't help but feel a bit aggravated. How was he supposed to get the note off the bird's leg? This matter was quickly settled when Hatori remembered that seahorses have prehensile tails, like monkeys. Maybe being a seahorse wasn't so bad, Hatori thought as he untied the note from the bird's leg. There were worse animals to turn into. A slug, for instance. Or a giraffe. Wouldn't that be awful, always having to duck your head whenever you went through a doorway?

By this time, the note was significantly off the bird's leg and unrolled so Hatori could read it, and it read as follows:

Scribble,  
Jot blot scribble scratch "yes" (or "potato, depending on how you looked at it) squiggle scribbley scratch.  
Splotch,  
Scrawl

Note: The letter did not actually read like that, but it is an accurate portrayal of how it looked. If one were to have a pocket Scribble-English dictionary, one could translate the letter very easily oneself. Hatori himself didn't need a pocket translator, however, since he was quite fluent in Scribbelese. Hatori was, after all, a doctor, and the sender happened to write in elegant scribble.

Translation:

Hatori,  
It has come to my attention that a young maiden is living in the company of Shigure, Yuki and Kyo. I know, of course, that you wouldn't have heard of this already, since you made no mention of it in your last report, and I know you would never forget anything so important, would you? You know, too, that I would, under normal circumstances, demand that you erase the maiden's memories, but I have decided that it is unnecessary at this time. Indeed, she may live there as long as she pleases. My best regards, dear cousin.  
Signed,  
Akito

Hatori thanked the bird politey for delivering the letter before fluttering back inside to look at the letter again. After reading it a second and third time, he wondered who the maiden could possibly be, and if she was a danger to Shigure, Yuki, and Kyo, considering that Akito was allowing her to stay.

"… under normal circumstances…"

Hatori decided, right then and there, that he would go to Shigure's house as soon as possible to see what was going on.

---

Hatsuharu was lost. Yes… very lost.

Even more so than Kagura, in fact.

But that was his own fault, considering that he had taken directions from himself when he was perfectly aware of the fact that he was terrible at remembering directions. Plus, there was no one around to ask directions from, and even if there were, it probably wouldn't help. Besides having a split personality, Hatsuharu was very lost-prone.

Why, the reader may ask, was Hatsuharu lost? Wasn't he at the mystical dojo of the Mountain of the Morning last?

Well, it'd been more than two weeks since Kyo had left, and almost a month since Master Kazuma had left. It was fun to have the place all to himself for awhile, but when Hatsuharu finished the fifth floor to the house of cards and used up all fifty-two cards plus the jokers, then found another deck and built a card replica of the dojo, then knocked both over with an oversized fan, then used the combined cards to engage in several games of Super Solitaire... Hatsuharu decided that it was time to get out of the dojo and visit someone.

Anyone.

And since he knew his third cousin by marriage was living with his third cousin of a used-to-be-long-lost uncle, and knowing that his third cousin by marriage was Yuki, who Kyo would undoubtedly go to see, and his third cousin of a used-to-be-long-lost-but-now-was-found uncle was Shigure, Hatsuharu figured that the best place to go would be to visit all three and left the Mountain of the Morning.

Which was why he was now lost in the middle of the Deep, Dark Forest.

He also happened to be lost in his own thoughts, which is why he ran into a tree.

"Oof. Stupid tree," Hatsuharu muttered, and continued on his merry way.

He promptly ran into a tall man in long, bright robes.

It wasn't the evil wizard who had mysteriously disappeared, nor was it Kagura in disguise. No, it was…

"Ayame? What?--"

...

Moral of today's story: True love always finds the right way, give or take a few detours.


	14. on small talk

CHAPTER 14 B  
_In which someone has a random and completely off-topic conversation with a goldfish. _

"My mother is a fish."

CHAPTER 14 C  
_In which the fairy godmother-in-training finally gardens,  
the dog begins a scientific study, and the four princesses arrive and do a little ditty. _

About the same time Kagura found a wizard, Hatori decided to take a flutter, and Hatsuharu found a tree, Tohru was returning to the Sohma's house from a local market with a bag of groceries in each arm. The princesses of Cloud 9 were supposed to arrive this afternoon, and Tohru thought that the best way to greet them after their long journey would be with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Tohru had also gone shopping for dinner, and she hoped that the princesses liked pea soup.

Actually, who didn't like pea soup? Tohru thought as she continued to walk down the road less-traveled. There were so many different ways to make it. Some liked it hot, for example, and some liked it cold. Some liked it in the pot nine days old.

Well, hopefully the princesses liked it hot and not nine days old, since she had just gotten the ingredients today.

The road less-traveled ended where the Sohma's garden path began, and Tohru was surprised to see a young man standing not ten feet from her, gazing at the roses.

"Oh!" Tohru said in surprise, almost dropping her bags.

The man jumped slightly and turned, looking just as surprised as Tohru felt.

Tohru blushed and, feeling slightly embarrassed, attempted to hide her face behind the paper grocery bags.

"I'm sorry if I interrupted you," she said hastily. "I'm just passing through, so please don't mind me."

Tohru hurried by him with the intent of letting the man admire the garden in peace, but she'd barely gone very far when she turned back around and said, "You aren't waiting for someone, are you? I'm sorry, I probably should have asked you that first… I mean, unless I was right that you wanted to be left alone. But if you're looking for someone, I wouldn't mind trying to find him, if you tell me who it is, and then you can look at the garden while you wait, if you're not in a hurry or anything and--"

"Miss Honda, please don't alarm yourself on my behalf," the man interrupted, placing a hand on Tohru's foot.

Huh-what? On her foot? Actually, come to think of it, the man was very, very short. His voice was oddly reminiscent of Yuki's, too.

Yuki put his front paws on the ground, and Tohru could see that the man she thought she saw standing in the garden was actually Yuki the mouse.

"Oh, it's you, Yuki," Tohru sighed happily. "I didn't recognize you. I wasn't interrupting you, was I?"

"Not at all," Yuki replied politely. "I was just looking at the garden and wondering if the roses needed watering."

Tohru turned and looked at the rose bushes with a scrutinizing look. Then she shifted the bags in her arms and looked back at Yuki.

"Please give me a moment to return, okay?" she said, and before Yuki could reply, Tohru was already heading inside the house.

Shigure was not in his room typing that morning. Instead, he had come down an hour early, just as Yuki had woken up early, and was in the main room reading the newspaper when Tohru came in with the groceries.

"Ah! Tohru!" he called, standing up. "Do you have a moment?"

Tohru stopped just short of the door leading to the hallway.

"Yes?" she asked, curiously.

Shigure cleared his throat, then smiled.

"Did you happen to buy the--" he began.

"Oh yes, I did!" Tohru said assuredly. "Where do you want me to put them?

"Just in the hall would be fine. But before you do, would you mind giving me the ball of yarn, first?"

Tohru nodded and said, "Just a moment."

She placed one of the bags down at her feet and dug through the other bag until she found what she had been looking for.

"Here it is," she said, pulling out a ball of dark gray yarn and handing over to Shigure. "I didn't know what color to get, so I got a color that matched your fur."

"Thank you Tohru, you are a wonderful flower," Shigure cooed before taking the ball of yarn between his teeth.

"It wasn't any trouble," Tohru said honestly, picking the bag back up. It was awkward, considering she only had one arm to use, and it was hard to get it off the floor.

"If you don't mind me asking," she said to Shigure once she managed to pick it up, "what did you need the yarn for?"

"Ah 'eehd ed hoa uhng ehgshferimehnd." Shigure said.

"I'm sorry?"

"Ah 'eehd ed hoa uhng ehgshferimehnd." Shigure repeated, which didn't make it any clearer at all.

Tohru stood quite still for a moment, and then smiled.

"Well, good luck, then," she said cheerily before walking into the hallway.

Shigure allowed himself a brief, evil chuckle.

Tee hee.

Not more than ten minutes later, Tohru had already made about twenty peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She then used her knobbley twig-looking key to get into her supply closet, and was now heading back to the garden with a pair of lightweight shears in garden-gloved hands.

Yuki had been waiting patiently for her in the shade of one of the rose bushes.

"What are you planning on doing with those?" Yuki asked almost nervously, but still pleasantly enough.

"I thought the roses looked like they weren't getting enough water lately, just like you were," Tohru said, sitting carefully next to Yuki so she, too, was in front of one of the rose bushes, "but I thought it was very odd, considering all the rain we had last week. Then I thought, perhaps they have been over-watered, but that couldn't be right, either, because it hasn't rained at all this week, and the roses haven't looked particularly sick until the past few days or so.

"In fact, I thought, they've been flourishing," she continued. "And that's when I figured out what was wrong with them."

Tohru smiled at Yuki in a sort of now-do-you-see? sort of way, but Yuki shook his head slightly.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Tohru gently took hold of a branch with several incredibly large red roses blooming on it.

"Let me show you," she said, taking her shears and delicately snapping off one of the roses so that it fell lightly into her lap, "This bush has too many blooms. The reason it looks so wilted is because all of the blossoms are weighing the branches down."

While she said that, two more rose blossoms fell into her lap.

Yuki glanced up at Tohru in astonishment. He looked as though he were about to say something, but then seemed to change his mind. Tohru, still concentrating on her work, didn't notice as she clipped one last bloom before releasing the branch. It sprang up as though attached to, well, springs.

"You see?" Tohru asked, turning her attention back to Yuki. One of the rose blossoms rolled off her lap and landed next to Yuki.

Yuki smiled slightly and stooped to pick it up.

"Yes. I do," he said.

"I wish I knew who planted these roses," she sighed, taking another branch in her hands. "They're really quite beautiful."

Yuki again looked like he was about to say something, but again, he remained silent.

Elsewhere, Kyo, who had miraculously avoided Yuki that morning-- not that he had actively been avoiding him or anything, that darn mouse—padded his way down the upstairs hall after practicing his mad cat kung fu art on the roof.

Note: Please do not practice martial arts on the roof, as it may prove hazardous to your health and unhealthy for your friends' and relations' nerves.

Kyo had planned on going to his room to put on his boots, vest, hat etc. in anticipation of the four princesses' arrival after breakfast, but at the top of the stairs, he was stopped by a very odd sight.

Kyo stared at it.

"It's just a ball of yarn," he said quickly. But he continued staring at it.

His whiskers twitched.

Just a ball of yarn, he thought to himself. It was stupid. It was just... it was a ball of yarn.

Kyo let out a primeval yowl and leapt at it.

Hiding behind the doorway down the upstairs hall, Shigure, already dressed in his best for the princesses, watched.

Most interesting.

Tee hee.

---

Tohru had clipped off enough roses to fill all of the vases, water glasses and coffee mugs in the house when she and Yuki heard the crunching of gravel under the weight of horse hooves and carriage wheels.

"It must be the princesses!" Tohru exclaimed delightedly.

Yuki did not look so enthusiastic.

No sooner had Tohru said this when a large and luxurious orange-colored carriage stopped at the entrance of the garden, and three beautiful young women attempted to get out through the door all at once.

"Owowowow! You're pulling my hair, Minami!" cried the one in a green gown of satin.

"It's not my fault, Mai-- Miya is pushing me!" said the one in yellow-gold cashmere. This was Minami.

"That's only because Mai's on my foot!" snapped the one in pink chiffon. This would be Miya.

"Are they the princesses?" Tohru asked, a smile spreading on her lips. "They're beautiful!"

"Minami! You're still pulling my hair! It really hurts!" sobbed the one in green. Since she was the only one not paired up with a name yet, she must have been Mai.

Note: I hope you were paying attention to all that, because there will be a name test coming up. Actually... on second thought... maybe not. It was just a moving tangle of talking arms and legs and hair-pulling and pastel-colored dresses, really.

Yuki chose not to comment on Tohru's observation.

"I'm going to fall over if Miya doesn't stop pushing me!" shouted Minami.

"If Mai would just—ow! That was my knee you just hit!" cried Miya.

"Just stop pushing, okay?" Minami cried back.

Standing in the rose garden, Tohru and Yuki exchanged worried glances.

"Do you think we should go help them?" Tohru asked, evidently concerned.

"I don't think so," Yuki replied. It looked a little dangerous to get too close.

And so the two had to content themselves with simply watching the princess' continued struggle.

"Maybe we shouldn't all try to get out at once," said Mai.

"Well, my foot's already out, so if you'll just stop jabbing my knee…" Miya began.

"I have an arm out," Minami whined, "so if you'd just let go of my dress…"

"Owch!" wailed Mai. "You're crushing me against the doorway!"

Yuki glanced over at Tohru again, who looked extremely distressed by the three princesses' predicament, and he was about to suggest maybe they really ought to help after all when a fourth voice sounded.

"Everyone just calm down," the voice said imperiously, and surprisingly, the three girls in the doorway immediately stopped struggling. They all went silent, except for a few whimpers from Mai, who was still pressed up against the doorway.

"It doesn't matter who gets out first," the fourth voice continued, "and since Mai is already halfway out, I suggest, Minami, that you let go of her hair."

"Yay!" Mai sighed in relief. Minami reluctantly pulled her fingers from Mai's short black hair.

Once Mai had jumped out of the carriage, Yuki and Tohru could see the owner of the fourth voice. She was the fourth princess, and she was dressed in midnight-blue gown of silk. She allowed Minami and Miya to exit together, still pushing each other, before she stepped out herself.

Yuki, for a brief moment, quietly panicked.

"Um… hello!" Tohru called before Yuki thought to stop her.

All four princesses snapped their attention on her. Tohru could feel the sudden weight of their combined concentration that she took a step back.

"You must be the princesses of Cloud 9," she continued nervously. She looked at each of them.

"Mai," she said to the one in green.

"Minami," to the one in yellow.

"Miya," to the one in pink.

"And you are… er… you must be Motoko," to the girl in midnight blue.

"And you are…?" Motoko asked suspiciously.

Tohru curtsied. It was a small curtsy, but she figure that would be better than a deep curtsy that ended with her falling flat on her face in front of royalty.

"My name is Tohru Honda. I'm the housekeeper."

Four audible sighs could be heard, though what the sighs were for, Tohru didn't know.

"Could you tell Prince Yuki that we have arrived, then, Miss Honda?" Motoko asked, waving a hand in the air dismissively.

"Ah… well…" Tohru began nervously.

"I'm already here," Yuki interrupted abruptly, standing up.

The princesses gazed at him.

"Prince Yuki…" they said in unison. Obviously, Shigure's trick had worked, and they all recognized Yuki as a human.

"You brought us roses…" Minami sighed.

"Roses?" Yuki repeated, completely baffled.

"How romantic…" Mai said.

Yuki looked down at his paws to see that he was still holding a rose from earlier that day. And piled up behind him, there was a wall of rose blossoms clipped from the branches.

Oh, yes. Those roses. Yuki felt something akin to dread sink into his stomach.

Motoko seemed to snap out of her Ah… Yuki Dream State first and clapped her hands.

"Places, everyone," she called.

Mai, Minami, and Miya stood at attention.

"Ready?" Motoko asked.

"Ready!" the Minami and Miya said.

"Wait! I have a rock in my shoe!" Mai cried frantically, but too late. The four princesses started to sing:

"L-O-V-E! We love Yuki! Yuki! LalalalalaLOVE! LalalalalaLOVE!"

During the song, they did a little dance that was, to say the least, most impressive since it involved a lot of jumping, clapping, and energy. At the end, they froze in what looked like to be Charlie's Angel's stances, but instead of holding guns, they were holding Yuki's roses.

The effect was ruined when Mai broke ranks and began jumping on one foot while holding the other saying "ow, ow, ow, ow."

Tohru smiled politely, but it was pretty obvious she wasn't exactly sure as to what had just happened.

"I thought you might be hungry from your journey," she said after a moment, still smiling. "Do you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?"

...

Moral of today's story: Don't get involved in a random conversation with fish,  
especially if they talk back


	15. on personal responsibility

CHAPTER 15  
_In which Ayame graces the story with his presence._

Dina's Diner, located at the corner of Easy Street and West Happy Trail, used to be one of those small, under-the-radar restaurants that a lucky few had stumbled into one day while wandering around on their way to Starlingbucks and decided that half a block was "really too far to go. Let's just pop in here instead and get a spot of coffee for ten dollars less, shall we?"

After that fateful day, it was the kind of restaurant that one only knew about after one's friend had introduced one to it, but since the food at Dina's Diner was really quite remarkably, every citizen in Fable knew about it after only a few weeks, some outsiders as well.

And about thirty Fable citizen's were packed into it right now.

Ritsu Sohma was in a state of minor shock brought on by anxiety as he brought coffee to table eight when an odd pair of customers entered through the door at the front. They chose the lone empty table against the window. The shorter of the two, a young man with black and white clothes that matched his hair, plus an alarming amount of metal jewelry, immediately sat down. The taller of the two, a person of indistinguishable gender (since his or her back was turned towards Ritsu, he couldn't really see), took the time to drape his or her outer cloak against the back of his or her chair, brush very long white tresses from his or her eyes, and flip aforementioned hair over his or her shoulder in a practiced careless gesture, before taking his or her own seat across from black-white-and-metal man.

Since Ritsu was so close, he could hear their conversation over the rest of the diner's hubbub.

"Of course, I would recommend the pancakes. They do make such wonderful pancakes here, though they make absolutely fantastic hash browns, too," said hippie hair to metal man in a deep voice that indicated that he was, indeed, of the male gender. "But don't feel obligated to take my lead, if you don't want, although you would certainly be missing out if you didn't," he added as an afterthought.

"I think I'll just get coffee," replied metal man, his chin drooping in his chest in a way that suggested that he really needed the caffeine. Ritsu felt the side of his mouth turn up into a smile he poured coffee water Mr. Table Eight's plastic glass cup.

"You should probably get dessert, too," said hippie hair airily, and it was uncertain that he had noted metal man's comment. "I think I'll get the apple pie, myself. I haven't tried it yet."

"Hey Ritsu!" called Diane from the counter, snapping Ritsu back to attention.

"Y-yes?" Ritsu asked, stumbling over to the counter quickly. "Did you need something? I didn't do anything wrong did I?"

"No," Diane said in her steady, no-nonsense voice. "Just take over the counter, will you? Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah strumming on an ol' banjo -- a _banjo_, of all things -- and I need to take a minute to kick the guy out."

"Yes, of course," Ritsu said.

---

Hatsuharu wasn't exactly sure how Ayame had talked him into ordering pancakes, hash browns, and Over-the-Moon Cheescake, but he heard himself saying all three things when the waitress asked what he wanted.

"And you?" Waitress Deanna demanded, scowling at Ayame.

Wasn't there something else? Hatsuharu asked himself as he stared with mild interest at the place his menu had been before Deanna had snatched it up. Apparently, the table was covered with a ninja print tablecloth underneath.

Ayame, meanwhile, rested his shin against the back of his hand, elbow on table, eyes on Deanna and smile turned up to super sparkle.

"I'll just have the Grandma Eve's Apple Pie, thanks," Ayame said Imperiously.

Haru glanced behind Deanna, who was still scowling at Ayame, to the table next to theirs. That table had a pirate print underneath the glass covering.

"That all?" Deanna asked.

"I believe so," Ayame said.

Hastuharu looked back at the ninja print tablecloth in front of him…

"Oh, and water for us both," Ayame added.

..and decided he rather liked the ninja better print best…

"Yeah, okay," Deanna said, scribbling on her notepad and somehow managing to grab up Ayame's menu at the same time. "I'll be back in a few."

…mostly because since it seemed like some of the throwing stars might be the glow-in-the-dark variety.

"Oh, and coffee," Hastuharu said distractedly, but Deanna had already left. Hatsuharu had to content himself with blinking sleepily at the empty space Deanna was no longer using.

"I'm so glad we ran into each other in the forest," Ayame said amiably, leaning back into his chair to regard Hastuharu. "I would hate to think of you wandering around, lost forever. You were so lucky to run into me."

"Yes, very," Hatsuharu said in a tired, amiable voice.

If you recall, Hatsharu had just bumped into someone in a long, dark cloak and said "Ayame? What--?" before the chapter abruptly ended. Ayame was both quite surprised and pleased to see Hatsuharu, because Hatsuharu was his great aunt's second cousin-by-two-marriage's distant nephew on his, Ayame's, mother's side, and Ayame insisted that he and Hatsuharu split the cost for his hotel reservation in Fable. It was now the morning of the next day, about the same time the princesses had just arrived at Shigure's house.

"However," Ayame continued, tapping the side of his chin with his index finger thoughtfully, "I don't think you ever told me why you were out there in the first place."

"Likewise," Hatsuharu said, focusing his attention politely on Ayame.

This was true. When the two had been traveling through the forest, Ayame had been very keen on telling Hatsuharu about recent adventures, and Hatsuharu hadn't minded listening. Later, when the two had finally checked into their hotel, Ayame then dragged Hatsuharu on a souvenir-shopping spree. Consequently, the subject of reason for travel hadn't been raised.

Ayame smiled.

"I was just going to visit someone important," Ayame said in a wistful voice very uncharacteristic of himself. Then he seemed to snap out of it, his back straightening as he said with his usual dramatic demeanor, "I have some very important news for him that I simply had to tell him myself."

"And what's that?" Hatsuharu asked mildly, eyebrows quirked.

"That's water," Deanna said, taking both Ayame and Hatsuharu by surprise as she slammed two glasses down on the table with such force that water sloshed over the rims. Or at least it surprised Ayame. Hatsuharu simply gazed at the water, eyes half shut.

Ah, yes, Hatsuharu thought.

"Do you have coffee?" Hatsuharu asked, his gaze sliding up from the water towards Deanna.

"Yeah," Deanna said boldly. "We do."

Hatsuharu stared at Deanna expectantly. Deanna crossed her arms and glared at him, foot tapping.

"So?" she asked finally.

"Can I order a cup?" Hatsuharu asked.

"If you want," Deanna shrugged.

Tap tap tap.

"I think I will, then," Hatsuharu said.

"Okay, then," Deanna replied.

Tap tap tap.

"I'll have a cup of coffee," Hatsuharu said, a small line appearing between his eyebrows.

Deanna whipped out her notepad.

"Regular or decaf?" she asked.

"Regular," Hatsuharu said.

Deanna scribbled it down on her notepad, turned on her heel, and marched off.

Hatsuharu rested his elbows on the table and let out a puff of a sigh. Now, he had been talking to Ayame before the waitress had come, and he was just asking—

"And you?" Ayame said quickly, cutting off Hatsuharu's thoughts. "Why were you in the forest?"

"Visiting family," Hatsuharu said.

"Really? What a coincidence! Great minds truly must think alike, as is made obvious in this serendipitous case," Ayame laughed. "We simply must travel together."

---

There was something of a shuffle of orders and Ritsu somehow ended up with the task of taking an order to table five where Hatsuaharu and Ayame sat.

Unfortunately, on his way there, Ritsu didn't notice that a 42-pound bowling ball had just rolled between table five and himself. I didn't mention this, but there was an international bowling team sitting at table eighteen called the Grandma Betty Bowling Team, as everyone in the group was a grandmother named Betty, except for Grandma Sir Lady Catherine Kaitlynn DeBourge, who was known as the Scourge of Devonshire back in the day.

Note: She was a grandmother, hence the Grandma, nobility, hence the Lady, and knighted for her expert bowling, hence the Sir.

Anyway, the Grandma Betty Bowling Team always ate at Dina's Diner before the big tournaments, but today, a bowling ball had somehow fallen out of Grandma Betty Blue's handbag and was now rolling away from the table. Ritsu, who was concentrating on serving table five in a manner that was Correct and Professional, didn't notice it until he was in the process of tripping over it.

"Oh no!" Ritsu thought as gravity took over.

And for some reason, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time, Ritsu threw the tray up in the air. He thought, for a wild second, that if he got back up fast enough, he could probably catch it before it fell.

And, well… believe it or not, it worked.

As soon as Ritsu hit the ground, he popped right back up to his feet and leaped after the tray just as it ended its upward momentum. He landed right in front of table five, and the man with long hair paused in his animated monologue for a brief second to notice.

"Ah, here it is, and it does look good. I do have the best taste in restaurants, if I do say so myself," he said after the initial pause. To Ritsu, he said, "The apple pie is mine, and everything else belongs to him. Although those pancakes look very good. Hatsuharu, you wouldn't mind if I had a bite? Of course you wouldn't."

During this time, Ritsu was putting the dishes on the table, the hash browns, the pancakes, the Over-the-Moon cheesecake, the apple pie, and lastly, the coffee.

He must of put the coffee down too hard, though, because a little sloshed over and spilled on the table.

"Oh, sorry, I'll get that," Ritsu said hurriedly, and took a washcloth from his apron pocket. While cleaning the drop of coffee up, however, in his haste, he knocked the cup again, and more coffee sloshed over the side.

"That's okay, I'll get it," Hatsuharu said, reaching for the napkin dispenser.

"No, no, I'll get it," Ritsu said, and he meant to pick up the cup to clean the puddle of coffee now formed around it, but he knocked it over instead.

"Oh no! I'm sorry!" Ritsu said as Hatsuharu had to move out of the way to avoid the flood of coffee now running off the edge of the table. Hatsuharu had gotten a drop of it on the knee of his pants leg.

"I'll clean it up right away! I'm so sorry!" Ritsu exclaimed, and a few of the other customers had looked over at him. "I'll get some water now!"

And he turned and was about to go get some water, but he had forgotten about the bowling ball in the middle of the path, and he tripped over it again.

Behind Ritsu, Ayame stood up, as the flood of coffee was now heading towards his end of the table, too.

"Is he okay?" he asked to no one in particular.

Ritsu, it seemed, was fine, but you see, the washcloth had flown from his hand and hit Grandma Betty Blue's pretty white hat and knocked it right off her head. Ritsu looked horrorstruck.

"I'm sorry!" he said, and hurried over to pick it up.

"It's all right, dear," Betty said. "I didn't like that hat anyway."

But Ritsu didn't seem to hear her, and he had picked up the hat to hand it back to her, only there was now a coffee stain from where the washcloth had hit it.

If you'd seen the cloud of gloom over Ritsu's head... it was truly heart wrenching.

"I'M SO SORRY!" he shouted very loudly. "I SHOULD HAVE NEVER STARTED WORK HERE! EVERYTHING I TOUCH GETS RUINED! I SHOULD - Ack!"

As he said this, he had been running towards the door, presumably to run _out_ the door and turn in his resignation letter later when no one was around to accidentally insult or injure in any way, but there was still that darned bowling ball.

Ritsu had jumped back up to his feet and was just about to begin his monologue of self-reproach again when he felt a small jab on his left side. Also, by this point, Hatsuharu was recalling an old story Shigure had told him about one of their other relatives, and how the best way to calm him down was to poke him in the side.

"Well," Haru thought, "couldn't hurt."

"Oh," Ritsu thought when he felt something jab into his ribs and promptly fainted.

...

Moral of today's story: Keep track of your belongings in public.


	16. on dining in

(black screen)

(music fades in, as do credits)

greengirlblue productions presents

a story loosely based on _Fruits Basket_

CHAPTER 16  
_The Case of the Missing Peas_

It's a Friday evening. The sun looks like a big, red drop of strawberry banana punch falling in slow motion behind the faraway mountains. I'm sitting in the living room, so I don't see it, but I have enough of an imagination to picture it in my mind.

We're all playing Poker, the prince, my sisters, me, when _she_ comes running in from the kitchen. She's Miss Honda, the housekeeper. She is short and plain-looking, and it looks like she's been crying.

"Are you all right, Miss Honda?" Prince Yuki asks. He's already on his feet, looking like he's about to rush over to her. Come to think of it, though, I haven't once seen him sit down the whole time we've been here.

"Oh, yes, I'm fine," Miss Honda says unconvincingly. "It's just the peas."

"The peas?" Minami asks. Minami is one of my sisters, the second oldest. She is sitting next to me, and when she turns her head to look at Miss Honda, her hands shift so I can't see her cards anymore. That's okay, I remember them.

"For the pea soup," Miya says informatively, coolly. Miya is my other sister, the second youngest, and she is sitting on the other side of Minami. Miya looks pleased: maybe because she can now see Minami's cards, maybe not. Miya and Minami are like two peas in a pod, forgive the pun, and it makes them competitive.

"That's right," Miss Honda said, nodding. "I had them out on the counter, but they're gone."

Prince Yuki turns and faces each of my sisters and me. How should I describe him? Let my powers of observation take over: he's short. Very short. But, oh, his eyes… they're beautiful, like grape jam on toast, the kind they serve at Bed and Breakfast Inns in the North, where it's white and snowy and perfect for romantic getaways for a princess and prince who are so very much in love and the prince says romantic things like—

"Have any of you seen the peas?" Yuki asks.

"What? No," I say, and Miya and Minami shake their heads.

"No, what?" asks someone else.

We all look up, and in the doorway with Miss Honda, there's my youngest sister, Mai. She looks tired and the hem of her skirt is muddy.

"No, nobody knows where the peas are," Miya says. "And I fold, by the way."

She must have seen that Minami had three aces.

Mai looks over at Miss Honda.

"For the pea soup?" she asks.

"That's right," Miss Honda says. "Have you seen them?"

Mai's eyes are big and green. She looks perpetually surprised, like she isn't guilty about anything.

"No," she says, real innocent like. "Have you been crying?"

"Huh?" Miss Honda asks, and she brushes the back of her hand over her cheeks. "Oh, yes. I was chopping onions before I realized the peas were gone."

I stand up. I wasn't winning the game, anyway, and it was time for someone to take charge. Looked like that someone would be me.

"Where'd you last notice them?" I ask.

Miss Honda looks up, like she's thinking.

"I let them out to thaw an hour ago," she says, "since I bought them frozen."

"And were you with them the whole time?" I demand.

She shakes her head.

"No, I went looking for Kyo."

"Who's Kyo?" Mai asks.

"He's--" Miss Honda starts.

"The mad cat," Yuki finishes quickly. When we first came into the house, there was an orange cat massacring a ball of yarn. That was Kyo, it seemed.

"Why were you looking for your cat?" Minami asks.

"Shigure wanted to talk to Ky… er… I mean…" Miss Honda trails off, her eyes darting from mine to Prince Yuki's.

"My uncle," Prince Yuki says with a hint of a smirk, "wanted to talk to a veterinarian. We think Kyo has fleas."

He seems to think about what he's said, then, to himself, "Where is Shigure, anyway?"

---

No one could figure out what happened to the peas, and so no pea soup was made. Since Tohru had been planning to make dessert, however, everyone enjoyed a slice of strawberry cake for dinner instead.

The next morning, the four princesses made their way down to the living room looking very tired.

"You looked exhausted," Tohru said empathetically, serving plates of French Toast.

"We are," Miya grumbled, her fingers massaging her back.

"It felt like there was this giant lump in the middle of the mattress," Mai said pitifully.

"Mine, too," Minami said sleepily before falling asleep on top of her French Toast.

"I'm sorry," Yuki said apologetically, smiling at Tohru as she carefully poured him a thimble of milk.

"You're very… kind," Motoko said in what might've been a gracious voice if she hadn't snored softly between the words "very" and "kind."

The carriage came to pick them up shortly after breakfast, and Yuki, Shigure, Tohru and Kyo (sitting so he looked like a cat) all waved them off, even though the princesses had fallen asleep the moment they had sat down inside the plush interior.

"That was surprisingly uneventful," Yuki said. "Besides the whole pea soup incident, and…" he smirked "your encounter with the ball of yarn."

"Shut up," Kyo snapped. "I swear, that ball of yarn was cursed or… wait, where'd Shigure go?"

Yuki, who had another insult ready, had to swallow his words and looked to where Shigure had just been standing.

"He keeps disappearing," Yuki said instead.

"Should we look for him?" Tohru asked.

"Heck no," Kyo snapped at the same moment Yuki shook his head and said, "Of course not."

Seeing Tohru's worried expression, though, Yuki sighed and added, "He's a grown man, he can take care of himself."

"I think I'll go up and clear the mattresses away from the spare room, then," Tohru said, and she turned to go back inside.

Her toe ran into a block of cheese.

"Eh?"

"What is it?" Yuki asked, peering past her ankle to see what had stopped her.

It was a block of cheese.

"What's what?" Kyo asked, peering around Yuki's head and Tohru's ankle. "What's that supposed to be?"

"It's the block of cheese I bought for Shigure yesterday," Tohru said, nonplussed.

"Cheddar," Yuki said.

Tohru and Kyo both glanced down at him.

"What'd you say?" Kyo asked.

"Cheddar," Yuki said, his nose twitching. "Sharp Cheddar Cheese."

Cheddar cheese. He didn't even like cheddar cheese, really. At least, he didn't think so, but that smell… that aroma of sharp cheddar cheese… it was beckoning him closer, closer…

"Yuki?" Tohru's voice sounded so far away… "Yuki, what's wrong?"

"H- hey!" that was Kyo's voice. "Snap out of it, rat boy!"

Yuki thought someone's hand was trying to catch him, trying to stop him. Ha! She couldn't block his path! No one was going to take him away from his cheese!

"Gimme!" Yuki cried suddenly, leaping forward.

Shigure was hiding underneath the living room coffee table, watching.

Very interesting. It seemed as though no one were safe.

...

Moral of today's story: Beware of the sharp cheddar cheeeeeeese!

...

By the way, yesterday morning:

"What do you mean, Hatori's not home?" Ayame asked. "I came all this way just to see him."

"I'm sorry, he left this morning," Ritsu said apologetically. "He came by to tell me that he'd left to visit Shigure. It seemed to be very important."

The breakfast rush had slowed down to a brunch trickle, and Diana had given Ritsu a half hour break, considering he had fainted. Ritsu, besides being distantly related, sometimes helped Hatori in the office as one of the many jobs he worked. When he realized that Ayame and Hatsuharu were looking for him, he told them that Hatori and Momiji had left already.

"If I'd known you were coming to visit, I would have said something. Sorry."

"You don't have to apologize," Hatsuharu said around a cup of coffee.

"Sorry," Ritsu said, and winced.

"Don't have to say sorry for saying sorry, either."

"Shigure?" Ayame asked after a moment, his eyes lighting up. "I haven't seen him in such a long time, too. How is he? Doing well?"

Ritsu nodded self-consciously.

"I think so. Momiji says that last time he visited, Kyo had moved in, too. But… well, the house is cursed, now."

"In what way?" Hatsharu asked.

"If one of us enters the house, we turn into an animal," Ritsu said.

"Which animal?" Ayame asked.

"Momiji turned into a rabbit," Ritsu said, holding up a finger. "And Hatori… ah…" he hesitated, then hurried on, counting the rest out on her fingers. "Shigure turned into a dog, and Kyo into a cat, and Yuki--"

"Yuki?" Ayame interrupted. "Yuki went to visit Shigure and Kyo?"

"He's been living there," Hatsuharu said.

Ayame, for once, went silent. He stared out the window for a good minute, then looked at Ritsu, as if he needed her affirmation.

"I guess you didn't know?" Ritsu asked.

Ayame smiled thinly and leaned back into his chair.

"Well, my brother and I have never been very close, after all," he said, tracing lines down the side of his cup of water, the condensation running together at his touch, forming heavy drops that rolled down the side. "And I suppose, if he asked Shigure not to tell me…"

Ritsu glanced over at Hatsuharu, who, like him, seemed surprised at Ayame's sudden drop of his normal happy-go-lucky self. When he noticed his glance, however, Hatsuharu schooled his face back to his normal indifference.

"I'm sorry," Ritsu said apologetically, turning back to Ayame. "Maybe he... um... forgot?"

Ayame looked up at Ritsu.

"You think?" he asked quietly.

Ritsu opened his mouth, still unsure of whether he should say yes, no, or stall for time by singing Fafaraway's national anthem, when Ayame continued, a hand over his face.

"No, of course he wouldn't forget, and it's true he hasn't talked to me in a long time, but that doesn't mean…" Ayame suddenly took his hand away and flung it out, his hair blowing out dramatically around him.

Note: Ayame, like Kagura, has this special power that attracts dramatic gusts of wind to flare his hair out at will. And although he doesn't have Tohru's high-quality shoujo bubbles, little sparks of glitter have, on occasion, glinted around him.

"That doesn't mean I can't talk to him!" Ayame continued, his voice full of determination as he stood at the table. "I see now that Yuki and I have a chance to strengthen our brotherly bond of brotherhood! I must go see him at once! Curse or no curse! Ritsu!" he sat down abruptly and tapped the table authoritatively. "You must come with us. It'll be nice, having a family reunion."

Hatsuharu calmly finished his cup of coffee and wondered if he could get a refill.


	17. on good directions, continued

CHAPTER 17_  
__In which mysteries are sort of solved, the dog is prone to his own prank,__  
__and everyone suddenly shows up, and it's a bit chaotic_

When the cheddar cheese had been utterly devoured, meaning that not even cheese crumbs remained, Yuki regained his senses. He was just inside the doorway of the house, the doors still open, with Tohru and Kyo standing on either side of him. In the silence that followed, he turned the Kyo, though he could still feel his face hot with embarrassment, and said:

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?"

"No, I…" Kyo said, and then he blinked, and snarled. "What, you think you're funny, rat boy?"

"Yuki?" Tohru asked, halting any pending argument with the slightly nervous tremor in her voice, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Miss Honda," Yuki assured her. "I just… don't know what came over me."

Tohru bowed apologetically.

"I'm sorry, Yuki. I was the one who bought that cheese. I didn't know it would do that to you."

"Why'd you leave it in the doorway?" Kyo asked, still glaring at Yuki, who pointedly ignored him.

"I didn't," Tohru said, popping back up. "I gave it to Shigure."

"Shigure?" Kyo muttered, more to himself than to the others as he glanced inside toward the living room. Cursed cheese was one thing… but a cursed ball of yarn, and the incident with the peas…

"What about Shigure?" Yuki asked.

"I'm just thinking," Kyo said.

"That's a first," Yuki shrugged.

"Shut up," Kyo snarled, but his expression went thoughtful again. "It's just that it's not like Shigure to miss out on an opportunity to laugh at someone."

It took a moment for Yuki to rewire his brain to not insult Kyo and to instead contemplate Kyo's sudden burst of insight.

"He has been keeping to himself," Yuki murmured. Then, to Kyo, "What did you feel when you were attacking that ball of yarn?"

Kyo's fur bristled, as if expecting another verbal attack. But, though it was true that fighting each other was second nature, joining forces to get back at Shigure was first.

"Like I couldn't stop myself until I'd ripped it to shreds," Kyo said, hunching his hackles defensively. "When I rolled it outside and under the house where I couldn't get it, I would have gone crazy if the green princess fished it out for me--"

"She followed you outside? That was why her skirt was muddy when she came back," Tohru said thoughtfully.

"She can do things with a ball of yarn I've never seen," Kyo continued dreamily. "She tied a leaf to one end and…" Kyo suddenly seemed to realize what he was saying and abruptly cleared his throat.

"It felt the same for me," Yuki said, "like I couldn't think straight until the cheese was gone." He remained silent for a second, then to Tohru, said, "You said you gave the cheese to Shigure? Did you give the ball of yarn to him, too?"

Tohru nodded. "Yes. When I went shopping the other day, he asked that I buy him a few things."

"What things?" Yuki and Kyo said in stereo.

Tohru looked up thoughtfully and began to count off items on her fingers.

"Cheese, a ball of yarn, one of those wheels you put in a hamster cage, a wind up mouse, a fwippy thing--"

"A fwippy thing?" Yuki and Kyo asked, again, in unison. And then, like mirror images, both turned to glare at the other for having the nerve to be thinking along the same line.

"Well," Tohru elaborated, "it's a bunch of feathers attached to a long string, which hangs off a plastic stick. And when you move it back and forth, the plastic bends and makes a fwipping sound." She grinned sheepishly. "It's a lot of fun, actually."

"Uh…" Kyo said, trying not to think of the fwippy thing. It did sound like a lot of fun, actually…

"Anything else?" Yuki asked.

"Just catnip and a copy of Witch Weekly," Tohru answered promptly.

"Catnip?" Kyo said indignantly. "I am not a cat!"

Tohru and Yuki turned to him and stared at Kyo, who looked suddenly as if he would like nothing better than to melt into the floorboards of the entrance hall.

"You'll just look like one until the curse is lifted," Tohru said kindly.

"And it seems like you'll act like one, too." Yuki said, and before Kyo could take it as an insult, "And I'll act like a mouse."

Tohru cocked her head to the side.

"But what about Shigure?" she asked.

----------

What about Shigure indeed?

He had gone back to his room to studiously record Yuki's reaction to the cheese and to pull out his next experiment, the hamster wheel. Would Yuki be able to resist it since it was associated more with hamsters than with mice, or would he be drawn into the glittering wheel because he was a rodent?

Unfortunately, Shigure wouldn't be able to answer that question, because when he pulled the hamster wheel out with his teeth, the corners of Witch Weekly became visible.

Shigure had only asked for it because he heard that a Miss Uotani Arisa had written an article inside this week's edition. But really, he should have known better. For as much as he loved Uotani Arisa's writing, and no matter how many awards Witch Weekly received for its excellent editorials, and even though the comics were dead funny, Witch Weekly, above all, was a newspaper.

And Shigure couldn't resist the urge to bring it to his master to read.

---------

Hatori and Momiji decided to take a short break on the left side of Yellow Brick Rd. before continuing on to Shigure's house. Hatori had explained the situation to Momiji after school, but as Momiji had a group project on Friday, they postponed visiting Shigure and company until today. It was very hot out today, though, and Momiji said that he really needed to sit down for a while in the shade. Hatori immediately agreed, both out of concern of his younger relative, and also because his fins were rather tired from all this fluttering.

While they rested, Hatori considered a few things about he had discovered during the past few weeks when he'd run out of things to work on. Momiji had suddenly developed an obsession with carrots, for example, and whenever Hatori ordered groceries, the eggs would always disappear from the egg carton and would be found much later, painted in pastel colors and hidden under the table, in the lawn and sometimes in the mailbox. And whenever Momiji had Trix cereal for breakfast, the expression on his face looked like every morning was Christmas morning.

Hatori figured that turning into an animal brought out characteristics of said animal, but only stereotypical behavior. Hatori himself didn't have any strange urges to eat seaweed or whatever seahorses ate, and besides finding a new interest in water ballet, Hatori's behavior hadn't changed much at all.

This is what Hatori was thinking when a gray dog with a newspaper caught in his mouth came running by. Hatori just recognized the dog as Shigure when a young woman with a mouse, Yuki, on her shoulder came hurrying by.

"Shigure, please stop running!" she called in a breathless voice. Hatori supposed she was the housekeeper. Lastly, Kyo came into view, looking reluctant to continue the chase. He finally slowed to a stop and sat down on the road. Although he was very much in shape, cats aren't made for long-distance running.

"Kyo, where are you all going?" Momiji asked.

"What the—where'd you come from?" Kyo snapped.

"Did you try telling him to sit?" Hatori asked.

"What?"

"Momiji, will you go after Shigure and tell him to sit, and then wait for us to catch up?"

"It's no trouble at all!" Momiji said before he took off quick as a rabbit.

---

"Shigure-yasha... sit, boy!"

And lo, there was a great crash.

---

Kyo and Hatori respectively padded and buzzed over to where Shigure was sprawled on the ground and Yuki was introducing Tohru to Momiji. With everyone there, Hatori explained his theory of the side effects of the curse – that each person would also show tendencies associated with each animal. This theory was confirmed by Shigure's experiments, and so everyone took a minute or two to sort this out in his or her minds.

It was right then that a sudden, loud and yet graceful crashing sound came from the forest to the west of the path, causing everyone to turn their heads and look. As you know, the Enchanted Forest sometimes shifts and changes when one is not on the path, and it seemed that a traveler had just found themselves a few steps away from Yellow Brick Rd.

A cool wind passed through the branches of the trees, and fresh pink cherry blossoms fluttered down from the sky, despite the fact that it was summer.

Oh no, thought Kyo. He thought about running, but then that would require thinking, and his mind seemed to be jammed.

A beautiful young woman in a traveler's outfit that looked hardly traveled in stepped out of the forest and onto Yellow Brick Road. She looked at the animals standing and one sitting around Tohru, and then looked at Tohru.

"Nice day for a walk, isn't it?" Kagura asked pleasantly.

Tohru blinked, then nodded.

"Oh yes!" she said enthusiastically. "It is. Very pretty, I mean."

"I'm so glad you agree!" Kagura said, smiling brightly. Then, she added almost shyly, "Where are we?"

"We're in the Relatively Dark Forest on the Yellow Brick Rd. just before it crosses the road less traveled when heading north," Tohru informed her quickly.

"Ah, I'm a little lost," Kagura said. She was about to say something more, but then she stopped herself and looked back at the animals, then to Tohru.

"Is that... Kyo?" she whispered.

"Mrk!" said Kyo.

Tohru looked surprised, but then a smile spread over her face.

"You know Kyo?" she asked excitedly.

Some of you may now be thinking, how the heck did Kagura recognize Kyo? He's a cat, for crying out loud.

Pooh. Love always finds a way.

Kagura didn't answer. Instead, she quickly but carefully picked up Yuki from Tohru's shoulder and held him in front of her.

"Oh, Kyo, what happened to you?" she asked tearfully. "How did you turn into a mouse?"

Uh... about love always finding a way...

"Er..." Yuki began, "I'm not Kyo. I'm Yuki."

"Really?" Kagura asked. "Oh, I'm sorry, Yuki."

"A mouse? I wouldn't turn into a mouse," Kyo mumbled angrily to himself.

Unfortunately, Kagura heard him.

"Kyo! I found you after all!" she cried, and after sort of kind of dropping Yuki to the ground (Yuki: 'Ouch!' Tohru: 'Are you okay?'), she picked Kyo up into her arms and hugged him very tightly. He did not turn back into a human.

Note: He couldn't really breathe, either.

Both Shigure and Hatori worried that Kyo hadn't turned back into a human when hugged, but they didn't have time to dwell on it because who should arrive on the scene but Ayame and Hatsuharu, dressed in sparkling new traveler's outfits and carrying bags of souvenirs!

"It really is a sort of family reunion!" Ayame cried.

"What are you doing here?" Yuki asked.

And then everything was chaos, and there were a lot of introductions, and Kyo might have passed out from being hugged so hard if Hatsuharu hadn't intervened with a pointed question directed at Kagura in time.

...

Moral of today's story: Love finds the way,  
despite detours and roadblocks and cases of mistaken identity.


	18. on missing persons

The following article was written in _The New York Multiplication _newspaper by Miss Jane Houston.

Many readers, including myself, have been anxiously awaiting the next book in Mr. Shigure Sohma's _Chicken Soup_ series, but Random Cottage Publishing has announced that we may have to wait yet another year. Readers may remember that last spring, Mr. Sohma's editor explained that Mr. Sohma had suddenly and typically disappeared just before the deadline, but promised that he usually came through in the end. This promise, however, was of course broken, but Random Cottage Publishing set a tentative publication date this year. And here's the date, but where's the book?

A full list of Shigure Sohma's _Chicken Soup­­_ series:

_Chicken Soup and the Philosopher's Stove  
Chicken Soup and the Chamber of Secret Recipes  
Chicken Soup and the Cook of Azkaban  
Chicken Soup and the Goblet of Pink Lemonade  
Chicken Soup and the Order of the Iron Chef_

CHAPTER 18  
_In which souvenirs are passed all around, and a princess is sought after._

As you may recall, Ayame and Hatsuharu, Shigure, Kyo, Yuki and Tohru, as well as Kagura, and Hatori and Momiji, had all met together on the side of the road, and had instantly recognized each other. After all, growing up in a family that tends to get cursed a lot, one begins to recognize family members in any form. What wasn't mentioned in an earlier chapter, however, was that both Ayame and Hatsuharu were bogged down with lots of bags, and after the chaos and introductions, Momiji's curiosity came into play.

"What's in the bag?" he asked.

And here Ayame got very verbose and told a long-winded story about adventure and historical districts and a rubber duck, and it was probably somehow relevant to the bags, but he didn't really explain how. Hatsuharu was much more successful with his explanation.

"Souvenirs," he said succinctly, "from the city."

And of course, nothing else would do except to have everyone sit in a circle, except for the case of Hatori, who instead hovered in the abovementioned circle, while Ayame directed Hatsuharu to pass out gifts to each respective owner. Shigure got a fountainhead pen, Hatori a book from the city's largest bookstore, Momiji a box of assorted candies, Kyo a rather nice snow globe (never mind that it never snowed in the city, which was what was featured in it), Kagura a Felix the Cat Handbag, and Yuki a book about gardening. There were, of course, many things left in Ayame's bags, but these were things that Ayame was planning on sending to other family members through the mail when he got back home.

Tohru, who wasn't expecting anything as she wasn't family, was surprised when Ayame turned to her (for she was sitting to his right) after handing out the abovementioned souvenirs and said, "Of course, I will give you your gift as soon as I have made it."

"Eh?" Tohru asked, sure that she had heard Ayame wrong.

"I had ulterior motives for visiting family in the city," Ayame said in an airy voice. "I wanted to look at the newest fabrics in the city as inspiration for my humble little fashion shop. I will make you a dress from the material I bought there."

"Eh?" Tohru said again, a little higher in pitch and more disbelieving than the first.

Meanwhile, as Tohru was stuck in emotional overload, Yuki quietly hung back as everyone else discussed his or her souvenirs together in appreciation. He was struck at how perceptive his older brother's gift had been – and he couldn't remember when Ayame had ever learned that he, Yuki, gardened.

It must have been coincidence, Yuki decided. Ayame probably picked the first book that looked remotely interesting while he was shopping for Hatori's book.

---

When everyone had exhausted themselves with talking, or in the case of Hatori, reading, and in the case of Hatsuharu, listening and nodding at the appropriate times, and in the case of Yuki, thinking, and in the case of Tohru, thanking Ayame profusely for his kind a generous offer, Hatsuharu cleared his throat and asked for everyone's attention.

"I think I may know where to find a counter curse for the animals," he said matter-of-factly.

This statement was followed by a brief second of absolute silence, and then a lot of commotion broke out.

"Really? What is it?"

"Where is it? Is it very far?"

"That's good. This form is very tiring."

"You're sure? This isn't just a rumor?"

Hatsuharu shrugged at the last comment, which had been made by Kyo.

"It is just a rumor," he said, "but it's at least something to go on."

"Then we must go straightaway!" Kagura said, scooping up Kyo and leaping to her feet. "We must restore Kyo to his proper state!"

"What about us, too?" Shigure said in a self-pitying voice, indicating himself, Yuki, Hatori and Momiji. "You haven't forgotten us, have you?"

"Of course not," Kagura said kindly, petting the top of Kyo's head distractedly. "It's just, well, we've postponed the wedding for such a long time now..."

Any information about a wedding seemed to be old news for the other Sohmas, but Tohru perked up and looked at Kagura.

"The wedding?" she asked shyly.

"Yes," Kagura said in a firm, happy voice. "Kyo and I."

"I never agreed to it!" Kyo said abruptly. "You just assumed that I would, but--"

"Kyo, don't be silly," Kagura said sharply, and Kyo might have said something that sounded like a small "meep" sound.

"How wonderful!" Tohru said, clapping her hands together. "I hope you'll be very happy together!"

"Of course!" Kagura said happily.

Meanwhile, Hatsuharu was content on letting the two girls converse, but just as he decided he didn't mind waiting to finish his explanation about the counter curse later, Hatori inquired that Hatsuharu tell more about it.

"There is a rumor that a princess from Bevelle was changed into a tiger," Hatsuharu replied, noting that Kagura and Tohru had ended their conversation in favor of his words, and everyone else as paying attention, too, except for Shigure, who had accidentally turned around three times before sitting and had consequently been sleeping since the beginning of this chapter and didn't know about that fountainhead pen yet.

"There is also a rumor," continued Hatsuharu, "that she changed back into a human. If we find her, she may be able to tell us how she did it. The only problem is that she was kidnapped by a dreadful giant and is being held hostage at the North Pole."

Everyone was quiet for a minute, digesting this new information, before Momiji jumped to his back paws and lifted a forepaw into the air.

"Then we shall go on an exposition to find this North Pole!" he cried happily.

And so, on an exposition they went.

...

Moral of today's story: Beware of plot holes,  
because sometimes, characters like Ritsu have a tendency of disappearing between ch. 16 and 18 if you don't keep an eye on them.


	19. on the wild, wild west

CHAPTER 19  
_In which we come up with marching songs, discover giants,  
and acquaint ourselves with Don Qui Hiro._

The Sohma family plus Tohru had been traveling through the woods in search of the North Pole, where the princess was rumored to be.

Note: Kagura's Felix the Cat bag was very helpful, because it held absolutely all the souvenirs.

Kagura had already sung her Kyo-Q song, and it had inspired Momiji to come up with a marching song of his own.

We all went off to discover the Pole,  
Kyo and Yuki and Tohru and all,  
It's a thing you discover, or so I've been tole,  
By Kyo and Yuki and Tohru and all.  
Hatori, Shigure, Hatsuharu,  
(Well, a lot of us Sohmas) all went too,  
And where the Pole was, none of us knew --  
Sing Hey! for Kyo and Yuki and all!

Momiji was just about to launch into the second verse when Hatori suddenly turned around and said, in a no-nonsense, do-as-I-say sort of voice:

"Hush! We're coming to a Dangerous Place."

"Hush!" said Momiji to Hatsuharu, who was standing in line behind Momiji, had been absently humming to the tune of Momiji's improvisational marching song.

"Hush!" Hatsuharu said to Yuki, who had been sitting very quietly atop Shigure's head behind Hatsuharu.

"Hush!" Yuki said to Tohru while Shigure said "Hush!" several times to himself quietly.

"Hush!" said Tohru to Ayame. "… uh… please."

"_Hush!_" said Ayame to Kagura and Kyo in a very loud and terrible voice that quite defeated the purpose of the command. At the front of the line, Hatori smacked his forehead in his right flipper, which was impressive considering his flipper didn't reach his forehead.

"Hush!" Kagura said to Kyo, and Kyo was so upset that the entire Exposition was saying "Hush!" to _him_, he thought about just leaving the line and finding a nice coffee shop nearby to have a relaxing cup of tea and just _forget these idiots_, but Kagura was holding him in a manner that sort of made it hard to breathe, so escape wasn't really an option, so he settled on scowling at everybody and sulking instead.

The entire Exposition was now standing (with the exception of Yuki, who was still sitting very quietly on Shigure's head, and of Kyo, who was being held very endearingly in Kagura's arms) in front of a sign that said, in very red, very bold text:

**DANGER!**  
**Giants ahoy!**

There was also a sign a few feet further in the path that said, in equally red but less-bold text:

Please regard  
all traffic and  
warning signs.

"Right then," said Hatori, and the group continued on their merry way.

---

The Relatively Dark Forest began to thin out a few yards later into the Little House Plains.

Note: The Little House Plains, if you'll remember from you're geography lesson in a previous chapter, lay directly east of the Enchanted Forest in the northern territory of La La Land. It was not mentioned, however, that the main industry of this part of the country is electricity, which is generated by unbelievably HUGE WINDMILLS of IMPENDING DOOM (Doom doom). Since the Little House Plains are "as flat as a saltine cracker," as geographer Stanley Yelnats so eloquently puts it, and the windmills huge and doomful, one can see windmills dotting the plains for miles around.

Tohru fell back in line and started a conversation with Kagura, and eventually they both came to the conclusion that they ought to stop and take a picnic, to which Shigure, who'd couldn't help but eavesdrop on the conversation, heartily agreed. Hatsuharu, who had politely offered to carry Kagura's FELIX THE CAT bag earlier that day, took just a few minutes before he figured out how to set it up as a picnic table, and the entire group was soon sitting together eating chips and salsa and bean tacos while Tohru poured everyone a paper cup of pink lemonade.

The mysterious silhouette of a young man on the back of an equally silhouetted horse paused at the exit of the Enchanted Forest. His eyes, which you couldn't see because of him being a silhouette and all, scanned quickly over the plains in search of potential enemies.

Unfortunately, the mysterious silhouette of a young man couldn't see much of the plains because he was wearing a very cheap, very old knight's helmet, and the maker of the helmet had been more worried about keeping his customers' face safe rather than letting his customers see exactly what they were getting into. Hiro, who was the person wearing the helmet, had almost returned the helmet back to the antique shop when he realized the flaw in the design, but then he wouldn't have had a helmet, and knights were supposed to be armored up and all.

And anyway, he hadn't been able to get the stupid thing off once he had tried it on three days ago, and the visor was rusted shut, so it wasn't like he had much of a choice.

That was beside the point, though. Don Qui Hiro Sohma, which was his full name, had promised to rescue the princess of Bevelle. He wouldn't be able to do it if he didn't keep moving.

It was a pity that he couldn't see very well, though, because he didn't go far before he saw, as well as he could see, the outline of a giant.

Although, in reality, it was actually a windmill.

---

The wind was a torrent of windlyness among the gusty trees  
The sun was a drop of honey tossed upon the cloudy seas  
The road was a ribbon of shadow and shade through the forest dim  
And the knight without king came riding-  
Riding - riding  
The knight without king came riding, up to the forest's rim.

He had no crest upon himself, nor money well enough,  
His armor steel had taken dents, his boots their share of scuffs;  
They fitted well with few complaints, despite their age and wear  
But he rode with faintly a-twinkle  
His armor faintly a-twinkle  
His sword glinted faintly a-twinkle, in the sunlight fair.

Into the plains he clattered and clashed to set against his foe,  
He drew the sword from side from scabbard, his burning eyes aglow,  
His trusty steed picked up in speed to—

---

It was all very strange, though Tohru. Everyone had just finished the last of the bean tacos, when suddenly a knight in rusting armor came charging out of the trees with sword brandished. Everyone (with the exception of Hatsuharu, who first finished his cup of pink lemonade before looking on with mild interest) watched in open-mouthed astonishment as the knight's horse ran full tilt toward the nearest windmill. It almost looked as though the pair would run headfirst into the wall, but one of the giant arms of the windmill came swooping down and knocked the knight right off the horse. The horse, on his part, wheeled around and started running straight back for the forest.

"Oh, this is terrible! We have to do something!" Tohru said, jumping to her feet.

"Call a doctor!" Kyo said, sounding worried, but at the same time, sounding as if he were trying not to sound worried.

Hatori pretended he didn't notice Kyo's comment, call a doctor indeed…, and started giving out orders.

When Hiro came to, he was surrounded by two young women, two young men, a cat, a mouse, a flying seahorse, and a bunny rabbit. It took quite a lot of explaining from Hatori to convince Hiro that:

1. No, he wasn't hallucinating. How many fingers was Tohru (that was the girl on his right… his other right) holding up?  
2. Yes, Tohru was holding three fingers up. Very good. Could he stand?  
3. Yes, Hatori was quite sure this wasn't a dream.  
4. Though, if Hiro still wasn't sure, Ayame was quite all right with trying to pinch him awake.

"What did you think you were doing?" Hatori asked when he established Hiro hadn't sustained any terrible head trauma, as the helmet, which had been hit so hard it had split and fallen off Hiro's head, much to the young man's delight, had taken the brunt of the windmill arm.

"I saw a giant standing here," said Don Qui Hiro as he grudgingly allowed Kagura to help him up to his feet.

"A giant?" Tohru repeated.

"Yeah, a giant," Hiro shot back. "What, did you not hear me, or did you think I was lying? Are you calling me a liar?"

"Uh… no, no, I didn't--"

"Geez, you're so untrusting," Hiro continued. "You don't even know me, and you already think you can judge me? Wow, I feel sorry for you. You think I'm not as good as you because I'm wearing this stupid old armor? Didn't your parents ever say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, or--"

"What the heck are you going on about?" Kyo interrupted irritably.

"What, do you need me to repeat what I was saying?" Hiro asked, rounding on Kyo. "Or are you really that slow?"

The only reason Kyo didn't attack Hiro at the moment was because it took him a second to get over the shock that Hiro had insulted him, and in that moment, Kagura had already rested a heavy hand on Hiro's shoulder.

"Don't... insult... Kyo...kun..." she said in a deep, scary voice.

Hiro had opened his mouth to retaliate, but there was this certain glint in Kagura's eyes that didn't look very healthy, so he let it drop.

"Well, thanks for your help and whatever," he said, brushing Kagura's hand away as if he wasn't ever so slightly afraid it might bite. "But that was my Rent-a-Horse, and unless you want to help out, I don't want to have to chase it all the way back to Sim City."

Note: Because so many knights go off on quests usually involving dragons, and since not all of them return (dragon society is quite fascinating, you know, and many knights spend years writing thesis on various subject ranging from dragon fashion, dragon politics, dragon cuisine, etc.), Rent-A-Horse has trained their horses to come back to their posts whenever they lose a knight. The largest and post is in Sim City, and there is, of course, an extra fee for not returning a horse in person.

"Uh..." Tohru squeaked.

"You know, nobody's ever gonna listen to what you say unless you stand up for yourself," Hiro said, his back turned to the group as he stalked off back in the direction of the forest.

"Yes," Tohru agreed quickly, "But you see..."

But Hiro was apparently not listening, and his rusty armor clattered and clanked so loudly, Tohru thought that maybe he really hadn't heard.

"How exactly are you planning to find your horse again?" Shigure called lazily after Hiro.

"What, you think I can storm the North Pole without one?" Hiro shot back angrily, whirling around. "You--"

"Ah!" Tohru said happily, clapping her hands together. "We're going to the North Pole, too!"

"You..." Hiro repeated incredulously. He seemed, for a moment, to be lost for words, and then he puffed himself up and continued toward the forest.

"Yeah right, don't make me laugh," he said importantly. "You probably don't even know where it is."

"Well, no, but…" Tohru began, but Hatsuharu interrupted her. He didn't say anything, nor did he send her a signal to her at all. You see, when the Exposition had scampered across the field to get to Hiro earlier, Hatsuharu had sensibly repacked the FELIX THE CAT picnic table into its bag form, and then, with a few clever adjustments, turned the bag into a first aide kit. When it had become evident that the first aide kit wasn't needed, however, Hatsuharu had contented himself with seeing what was inside: a box of band aides, a list of emergency numbers, hydrogen peroxide, bandage wraps, butterfly clamps, a rubber ducky, sunbloc, latex gloves, a rope and a cowboy hat, etc.

Hatsuharu had, of course, been paying attention to the conversation going on around him, and he had perked up at the last thing Hiro had said: _You probably don't even know where it is!_

Hatsuharu did some quick thinking, and, coming to the final conclusion, shoved the cowboy hat on his head and made a quick noose in the rope. Before Tohru had completely finished with her sentence, he had thrown the rope and lassoed Hiro 'round the middle.

Hiro halted in his retreat very suddenly when Hatsuharu gave an experimental tug on the rope, and he, Hiro, suddenly found himself with his back on the ground… again. Hatsuharu walked over to Hiro and looked down at him.

"Sorry, didn't think it was actually going to work," he said offering a hand up.

Hiro glared up at him and didn't take the offered hand.

"What do you want?" he asked impatiently after a moment of glaring without much result.

"I just figured you know where the North Pole is," Hatsuharu shrugged.

...

Moral of the Today's Story: There's a little cowboy in us all.


	20. on unhelpful giants, sort of

CHAPTER 20  
_In which plots are plotted  
and Tohru observes the interior design of the North Pole._

The North Pole, despite what its name implied, was actually the southernmost windmill on the Little House Plains. The princess of Bevelle had been kidnapped by George, the Big Unfriendly Shape-shifting Giant, or so the gossip ran, and Hiro had been dispatched to quickly and efficiently save her. Hiro grudgingly explained this story to Hatsuharu for the following reasons:

1) Hiro couldn't get up on his own because the armor was so darn heavy  
2) Hatsuharu decided that he wouldn't help Hiro up after all unless Hiro told everyone where the North Pole was  
3) to which Hiro replied, "That's stupid. How do you know I won't tell you the wrong place?"  
4) to which Hatsuharu said, after absently tapping the brim of his cowboy hat up a notch, "Good point. You'll have to come with us."

"Ah, clever, very clever," Shigure said, nodding to Hatsuharu in approval.

"Yes, it was, wasn't it?" Ayame agreed amiably.

"It was effective, in any case," Hatori noted mildly, and then turned his attention to Momiji, who was now playing with the Felix the Cat Bag. Momiji had just figured out how to make it into a canoe, and was pretending to paddle it downfield with a blade of grass.

"Thank you so much for your help," Tohru said to Hiro as Hatsuharu pulled him to his feet.

"Tch. What are you saying thanks for?" Hiro snapped back at her, jerking his hand away from Hatsuharu. "It's not like I had a choice in the matter. Are you making fun of me?"

"No! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make fun of you." Tohru apologized quickly.

Hatsuharu frowned down at Hiro before wandering off to repack the lasso in the first aide kit. He rather liked the cowboy hat, though, and decided to keep wearing it. Momiji, who was still experimenting with the Felix the Cat Bag, had made the canoe into a tent, and then into a hang glider.

"Not to sound rude," Yuki said after a moment, "but why would they send a child to fight a giant?"

Hiro shot Yuki a very cold, disapproving glare.

"Look who's talking," he said coldly. "You have a mouse, a cat, a zippy fish, a rabbit, a cowboy, this girl," Hiro jerked his thumb in Tohru's direction, "who's obviously a bubble-head--"

Hiro didn't get much farther than that, because all of a sudden, Kyo was no longer in Kagura's arms and was instead on Hiro's shoulders with his claws extended over Hiro's face. The wind had also gotten suddenly cold and blusterous, and Kagura's hair was waving wildly in the air, a vengeful spark in her eyes. There also seemed to be very dangerous waves coming from Yuki's direction as well.

"Don't insult Tohru," they said in unison in very angry voices.

"Uhm… uh… I'm not…" Tohru stuttered.

"So… how are we going to defeat the giant, given the army we have at the moment?" interrupted Shigure.

"We could--" Hiro began.

"Without storming the castle," Hatori added, interested in the conversation again now that it had steered into something more productive than insults and threats. Kagura, suffering from Kyo withdrawal, snatched Kyo off Hiro's shoulder and walked over to stand next to Tohru protectively. Yuki also jumped off Shigure's head to stand with a paw on Tohru's shoe.

"I don't see you coming up with any ideas," Hiro said rather more sulkily than he meant.

Meanwhile, Hatsuharu had joined Momiji in playing with the Felix the Cat Bag. Portable phone, bicycle, trampoline.

"I know what to do!" said Ayame suddenly and Invincibly.

"What?" Shigure, Hiro, Tohru, Yuki, and Kagura asked while Kyo continued glaring at Hiro.

Ayame brushed back his long hair and stood with his hands on his hips, looking off in the distance.

"I firmly believe," Ayame said nobly after a moment of reflection, "That as soon as someone comes up with an idea, we should carry it out bravely and without hesitation."

Everyone stared at Ayame for a minute in silence, expecting something more. Ayame, on his part, seemed more interested in the horizon. Yes, he did look Dramatic.

"Anyone have any other _helpful_ ideas?" Yuki asked irritably when it seemed Ayame didn't really have anything to say after all.

Momiji and Hatsuharu's latest contraption was a walk-in closet with a mirror. The mirror gave both Hatsuharu and Momiji a start, but Tohru, who had been silently berating herself after accidentally insulting Don Qui Hiro, noticed the walk-in closet as well.

"Oh! I have an idea!" she exclaimed happily, clapping her hands together.

---

George, the Big Unfriendly Giant, was playing Parcheesi against himself (and losing rather badly) on a great fold-up table when there came two crisp knocks on the door. At first, George ignored it, because he was big and bad and never answered the door politely, but the knocking continued, and eventually, George got rather annoyed by it, and since he was losing anyway, he left the table to answer the door.

There was a little wooden wheel right next to the door that was divided into four parts by color. There was also a window by the wheel, and when George turned the wheel from red to yellow, the scenery outside seemed to shift from a lovely beachside scenery to an ocean of golden grass of the Little House Plains. Then, finally, he unlocked the door and opened it.

There were two tiny people standing on the doorstep, a young man in a fuzzy orange suit and boots, and a young man in gray with a large hat that covered his face.

"What do you want?" asked George in a rude voice, glaring down at his two guests.

"We… uh…" said Gray hesitantly, then he seemed to gather himself and continued in a more animated tone, "We heard that you are the great shape-shifting giant: George, the Big and Unfriendly."

George smirked at himself.

"Well, yes, that's me," he said importantly. "I can change my form into anything I want."

"I don't believe it," said Gray.

"Fine, I'll show you," the giant said, and with that, he wiggled his nose and winked an eye, and he instantly turned into huge dragon.

"Wow, that's impressive," said Gray after a moment of silence. He must have been blown away by the majesty, George thought.

"Yes, it is," said George the Dragon.

"No it's not," said Orange. "That just proves he can turn into a dragon. I bet he can't turn into a whale."

"Oh, but I can!" exclaimed George the Dragon forcibly. He poked the end of his nose with a claw and stood on his right foot, and lo! he turned into a pudgy beluga whale.

"That's amazing," said Gray. The majesty!

"Pfft, I bet he couldn't turn into something small, like…" and here, Orange hesitated.

"Like a ball of yarn," Gray interjected quickly.

"What?" Orange asked heatedly just as George said, "Watch me!"

And George sort of waved his flippers in the air, and poof! He was a ball of pink yarn.

"Mine!" exclaimed Orange, and he leapt on the ball of yarn, leaving his boots behind on the doorstep to reveal that he was actually Kyo the Cat. Yuki took off his hat and turned outside to wave at the rest of the Sohmas plus Tohru, who were hiding behind the nearest windmill with their heads peeking 'round the corner.

"Argh! Stop that!" said George, the Amazing Ball of Yarn, as Kyo batted him across the floor. "I'm dizzy… I can't change back!"

---

It hadn't been Tohru's plan for Kyo and Yuki to trick George, the Big Unfriendly Giant, into changing into a ball of yarn. Rather, she had learned about giants in her fairy-godmothering classes, and George in particular. George, she had read somewhere, was allergic to cats, and she had thought that if Kyo was dressed as a human, he wouldn't realize why he was sneezing so much and wouldn't send Kyo away. Meanwhile, Yuki would slip off as a mouse and search the windmill until he found the princess and devise a plan for escape from there.

But the ball of yarn trick worked just as well, if not better, so Tohru was happy either way. After awhile, she remembered that it was actually Georgia, George's little sister, who was allergic to cats.

But anyway…

Tohru was the last to enter the windmill and so closed the door behind her as everyone began looking around the inside for the princess. Momiji looked under the doormat while Yuki had scaled the leg of a rather large table, although Tohru didn't know if this was because he was looking for the princess or if he were trying to get away from Ayame, who was trailing after his brother with some story about killing seven in one blow. Well, that sounded morbid...

Actually, this may take some explaining. Not Ayame's story, which really _did_ take a fair amount of explaining, but what Tohru saw.

Picture this: If you were to walk in, Tohru would be standing just inside the door on the doormat. The doormat was about 6 feet by 8 feet, and Momiji was checking under what would be the upper right-hand corner from Tohru's point of view. There was a pair of large black boots a few feet past the doormat, and Hatori was telling Shigure to stop gnawing on the shoelaces, that he knew perfectly well that only puppies did that, not fully grown dogs. Yuki was atop the table while Ayame continued to talk to himself. Hatsuharu and Kagura had both gone over to inspect the fireplace, which was about the size of Shigure's house, but Kagura had wandered off and started a game of yarn soccer with Kyo, much to Kyo's delight. In the far corner, Hiro was running up and down the length of a rolled up futon calling for the princess. Hiro, from Tohru's point of view, was a small little stick person.

Momiji had finished looking under the carpet and was now inspecting the colored wheel by the door. Tohru, who was looking around in hopes to find someway to be useful, noticed that the light changed whenever Momiji changed top color. Curious, Tohru ran out into the North Pole until she could see out the window.

"Oh!" she said. She didn't think she said it very loudly, but it got everyone's attention anyway.

"What is it?" Kagura asked, pausing her game of soccer with Kyo.

Without answering, Tohru ran back to the door and, with all her might (and she _was_ strong – you try sweeping the floor everyday and see if you don't get some muscles), pulled it open. The Sohma's watched, assuming that the door would open back to the Little House Plains, but it didn't.

No, it led to a different place altogether…

...

Moral of today's story: Giant problems can often be solved with some thought.


	21. on cold hearts

_An excerpt from page 52 of Lewis Clark's best-selling travel guide, _Traveling Boldly Abroad.

In the far north, so very far north that it is always cold and always snowing, there stands a castle made of entirely of glass and silver. It is difficult to describe the exact size and structure of this castle, because as it is made of glass, there are walls that are entirely transparent (and there had been more than one oblivious adventurer who had run headlong into one of these walls), and there are walls that perfectly mirror the snow and sky around it. Indeed, the only part of the castle one could definitely see is the door, because it is outlined in intricate vines of silver that curl out of the snowy landscape like wisps of steam.

There is only one resident in this castle, and she is the Ice Queen. She too is difficult to describe, because the people who had met her are few and far between. The man who cobbles shoes in Little Town West of the Hills remembers the Ice Queen wore a long silk dress that trailed after her like wisps of snow clouds as she walked. The alchemist of Metropolis recalls the Ice Queen had graceful, elegant hands that turned this way and that to describe exactly what she thought. The king in the land called Fafaraway describes the Ice Queen as both the loveliest and saddest woman he'd ever met.

Everyone who had traveled to the castle so very far north agreed on this, however: the Ice Queen had the deepest, darkest eyes like water reflecting the night sky. To look into those eyes was both humbling and frightening.

The Ice Queen is not kind, but she is just and wise. It was said that the Ice Queen knows the answer to any question asked in her presence, but she would answer only one question for any person who braves the cold and the snow of the land so very far north of everywhere else.

CHAPTER 21  
_In which the party is divided, music is added,  
and the fairy godmother in training and the knight roll a five._

Outside the door, there was nothing but snow.

Yes. There was definitely a lot of snow.

It was decided that since the princess apparently wasn't in the North Pole, perhaps she had escaped out the door into… wherever this was. After some debate, it was agreed that Ayame, Hatori, Tohru and Hiro should stay behind.

Note: Ayame was cursed when he was around the age of 12 that if he got too cold, he would turn into a pincushion. It was not a pleasant experience. Hatori, being the family doctor, knew how to change Ayame back into Ayame if this happened (although he threatened he wouldn't if Ayame was annoying… though he said this in a kind voice). Don Qui Hiro, everyone agreed to Hiro's chagrin, was too young to be put in a potentially dangerous situation. Tohru opted to stay behind because she wanted to be sure that when everyone got back, there would be hot chocolate waiting.

The traveling party, then, was Kyo, Kagura, Yuki, Shigure, Momiji, and Hatsuharu. Hatori, because he had a degree in Fairy God Parenting, made a magical silk thread with Tohru's aide. This way, the group would be able to follow the thread back at the end of their exploration.

Hatsuharu, meanwhile, transfigured the Felix the Cat bag back into the walk-in closet, and everyone grabbed something warm to wear (it was a little cold inside the North Pole too, now that it was actually in the North) with the exception of Shigure, Kyo and Yuki, who were already dressed in nice thick fur coats, and Hatori, whom Ayame put into his pocket. Momiji took a yellow scarf because he thought it was cute, and Tohru agreed. There was a slight scuffle between Kagura and Ayame for the elegant red coat with a Far East design, but Ayame won that battle when Kagura found a fuzzy bright-orange with matching kitten mittens. Tohru wore a dusty pink cardigan and matching earmuffs and scarf, while Hiro grabbed a light brown jacket that didn't fit over his armor. Sighing irritably, Hiro sat down in the middle of the floor and pulled his armor off, starting with the gauntlets. He frowned at Tohru when she came over to help, but he let her pull the torso up over his head this once just because he couldn't himself.

Hatsuharu had put his cowboy hat into the closet in favor of a fedora, and then found a brown leather jacket that looked like it had seen better days (and possibly better evenings and nights, as well). He folded the Felix the Cat walk-in closet back into a bag and tipped his hat at Tohru, who was currently being berated by Hiro for something or other.

"Let's go," Yuki said, the magical thread tied to his tail, and was the first to step outside.

And holy muffins, was it cold!

Luckily, though, Yuki didn't get very far until he walked full-face into something. He staggered back a pace, disoriented, and was about to warn Shigure and Kyo that there was something there, but it was too late. They'd both crashed into it, too.

"Ow!" they said in unison.

"What's wrong?" Kagura asked, as she had stopped about a foot away from the animals, who were all three rubbing their cute-as-a-button noses.

"We ran into something," Yuki said.

"Ran into what?" Kagura asked.

"It's a wall!" Momiji said happily, who had bounded to the front of the line and was now patting his paw against… empty air.

"What wall?" Kagura asked, and she stepped over the animals with a hand raised and… her palm hit against something solid.

"It's the glass castle," Hatsuharu said behind them. Everyone turned to look at him

"The glass castle?" Kagura asked incredulously.

"It's not possible," Yuki said, shaking his head.

But it was, and they knew it.

"Maybe she'll know how to break the curse," Momiji said quietly. "The Ice Queen."

"Only one way to find out," Hatsuharu said, and without another word, the group unanimously headed east, palms and paws rested against the invisible wall.

---

Meanwhile, back at the North Pole, Tohru, Hiro, Ayame and Hatori were playing a team game of Parcheesi (since it took Hiro and Tohru's combined strength to move one piece, and also, it was very tiring just rolling _one_ die, much less two; and Hatori couldn't move any pieces at all) on the giant's table.

Note: Actually… whatever happened to George?

"Hooray! A five!" Tohru said happily, and she and Hiro pushed one of the pawns out of 'Start.'

---

The traveling part of the Exposition was now standing in front of a set of large glass doors surrounded in designs of intricate silver.

"Art nouveau," Shigure said knowledgably to Momiji, because he had studied this sort of thing for one of his books, and because Momiji was standing next to him.

The group just sort of stood and stared until Kagura had the presence of mind to knock. Seemingly on it's own, and perhaps a little creepily, the door swung open.

"Should we go inside?" Yuki asked Shigure, because Shigure, even though he didn't often act like it, was the adult.

Shigure shrugged a shoulder, which was interesting to see since it was a mannerism one didn't often see dogs use.

"Faint hearts never won fair maidens," Shigure winked, and was the first to go inside.

Apparently, though, this wasn't the greatest idea, but the group had no way of knowing yet, and they all followed. You see, there was just so much snow everywhere that even I'm not entirely sure where it came from, but the vibrations had somehow caused a slight shifting of snow somewhere, and somehow, a snowball had been created, and as it rolled farther, it got bigger, until it finally reached the great double doors of the castle with and five foot radius that took up the entire hallway. By the time the giant snowball got there, the Exposition was already trapped inside.

Kagura was the first to notice it, and had already snatched up Kyo and Momiji and was sprinting down the hall before her entire warning, "Run for it!" came out. Shigure looked behind his shoulder and did that classic double take before following and eventually passing Kagura.

Which left Hatsuharu and Yuki.

Again, I'm not entirely sure how this is happened, but besides the very loud rumbling of a giant snowball racing down the hall, music of the adventuring variety began swelling up from the walls. Hatsuharu shoved his hat down on his head, swooped Yuki up into his other hand, and did as Kagura had suggested. He ran for it.

---

"We could play Go Fish," Ayame said, pointing to a box of cards that was approximately the size of three twin-sized beds stacked one on top of the other.

"I only know how to play Rich Man, Poor Man with cards," Torhu said sadly. She, Ayame, Hatori and Hiro had finished their game of Parcheesi when, while they were deciding what to do next, Hiro had discovered the drawer built in to the side of the table. After a few minutes of struggling, they managed to open it and climb inside. Tohru had lit the inside of the drawer with her Shoujo Bubbles, and they had discovered an entire host of table games.

Hiro was sitting on the pedestal of one of the chess pieces that had been left out of its box.

"Why don't we play something that involves pieces we can actually hold," he said scathingly. "You could build a house with those cards."

"How about team Scrabble?" Hatori suggested.

...

Moral of today's story: Faint hearts never won fair maidens,  
but they don't get run over by giant snowballs much, either.


	22. on the benifits of math class

CHAPTER 22  
_In which a game of wits and cunning is engaged  
and the caterpillar gives advice._

"We could play Go Fish," Ayame said, pointing to a box of cards that was approximately the size of three twin-sized beds stacked one on top of the other.

"I only know how to play Rich Man, Poor Man with cards," Tohru said sadly. She, Ayame, Hatori and Hiro had finished their game of Parcheesi when, while they were deciding what to do next, Hiro had discovered the drawer built in to the side of the table. After a few minutes of struggling, they managed to open it and climb inside. Tohru had lit the inside of the drawer with her Shoujo Bubbles, and they had discovered an entire host of table games.

Hiro was sitting on the pedestal of one of the chess pieces that had been left out of its box.

"Why don't we play something that involves pieces we can actually hold," he said scathingly. "You could build a house with those cards."

"How about team Scrabble?" Hatori suggested.

---

Hatsuharu was pretty certain that there was a direct correlation to the volume of the adventure music and the proximity of the giant snowball. The louder the music, the closer the object. This was a helpful observation, because Hatsuharu could predict how far away the snowball was without wasting speed by looking over his shoulder. At the moment, for example, he couldn't really hear what Yuki was shouting at him.

"If you… wall… then the… right by…!" Yuki shouted.

Which meant that the snowball was probably just about to run them over.

"What?" Hatsuharu asked, holding Yuki up to his ear as he continued running.

"If you lie down with your back against the wall, the snowball would probably run right by you," Yuki shouted again.

Hatsuharu thought about this. Well, yes, that made sense.

Note – a lesson in geometry: If one looks at the cross section of the hall, one would have a square. If one looks at a cross section of a snowball, one would have a circle. The circle would fit inside the square, leaving four funky-looking triangles of empty space at each corner. Hatsuharu, if lying parallel to the wall, would fit comfortably in one of these corners without touching the circle.

"Hold on," Hatsuharu told Yuki.

"What?" Yuki asked, but Hatsuharu had already leapt forward, putting a little more distance between himself and the snowball, the hand not holding Yuki slapping the ground to break his fall. Without waiting, he rolled until he hit the wall with his back. Exactly two seconds later, the snowball rolled right past them, shedding a few snowflakes as it did.

Hatsuharu sat up and placed Yuki back on the ground. The two of them watched the snowball continue to roll away as the music faded in an anticlimactic let-down, and then Hatsuharu stood up, dusting the knees of his pants off with his hands.

"I guess we should try and catch up with everyone else," he said.

Yuki, whose line of thought was still stuck on the fact that they had nearly gotten run over by a snowball (a snowball!), merely nodded.

After a few minutes of walking, the two heard a mighty crash, and after a few more minutes, they came to a bend in the hallway where the snowball had smashed into the intersecting wall. Kagura, Momiji, and Kyo were all waiting there as well, Kagura building a snowcat in the likeness of Kyo and Momiji building a snowbunny in the likeness of himself. Shigure, it seemed, had continued running until he was much farther ahead of everyone. It was possible that he was still running.

"Cute," Hatsuharu said by way of greeting. Yuki may have agreed, but he was climbing over mouse-sized mountains of ice, and his paws were mighty cold.

"Thanks!" Momiji and Kagura said together.

"Ready to keep going?" Kagura continued.

"Let's," Hatsuharu replied.

---

_Triumphant_. Seventeen points, plus a double letter score on the H, multiplied by two for the double word score, plus another fifty points for using all seven letters in a turn (_ant_ had been placed on the board in the previous turn). So that meant… Hatori did a few quick calculations in his head… ninety two points.

Note: I probably forgot to mention that Shigure, Hatori and Ayame all went to high school together, and also that they participated in the school's Scrabble Club. The three of them were undefeated their senior year.

Tohru and Hiro stared at the board for a minute before discussing among themselves. Then they both hurried to their line of letters and picked up one block each before scuttling back to the board. Tohru put her letter, L, down first, and then Hiro laid his next to it.

_Triumphantly_. The Y landed on a double word score. Forty four points. Good. Not spectacular, which is what they needed to be if they wanted to win, but good…

---

They had been walking for an hour, taken three more left turns, and they were back at the pile of snow, only it wasn't snow anymore, it was a puddle of water.

"A mystery..." Hatsuharu said.

"No," Yuki sighed, "just a complete circle."

"It's not fair!" Kagura cried. "It just goes on and on and..."

She kicked the wall, which she shouldn't have because it _really_ hurt (the wall, not Kagura), and sat down to sulk. Kyo, with great reluctance, patted her knee with a paw in a rare display of affection. Morale was low, except for Momiji's, who had splashed into the puddle of water and was now having a grand old time.

"Aloha," said a small voice near Kagura's shoulder. Kagura sat up and looked around, as did Kyo, Yuki and Hatsuharu. Momiji was pretending to be a beluga whale.

Kagura, Kyo,Yuki, and Hatsuharu, however, were all four looking at a green caterpillar with a red scarf, and the green caterpillar with the red scarf was looking at them. He was sitting on the floor in front of a small hole in the wall with a tiny door and a bell pull that looked suspiciously like the bell pull at the dojo, only in miniature.

"Did you say hello?" Yuki asked politely after a moment of surprised silence.

"No, I said 'aloha,' but that's close enough," the caterpillar replied, laughing a little.

"But... you're a worm," Kagura said.

"That's right," the caterpillar said, because apparently he didn't know he was a caterpillar and not a worm, or else he was too polite to say otherwise.

"You don't, by any chance, know the way to the Ice Queen, do you?" Yuki asked.

"Who, me?" the caterpillar laughed again. "No, I'm just a worm."

"Oh," Yuki said, shoulders slumping.

The caterpillar, sensing the group's disappointment, gave an encouraging smile and nodded his head towards the hole in the wall.

"Come inside and meet the missus," he said.

"Er…" Yuki hedged, trying to figure out how everyone was supposed to fit inside that hole, "Thank you, but we really need to find the Ice Queen."

"But there aren't any doors or openings or anything," Kagura added.

"You're just not looking right," the caterpillar said brightly. "This place is full of openings; you just aren't seeing them."

"Where are they?" Hatsuharu asked.

"There's one just over there," the caterpillar replied, nodding to the place a little to the right of where Kagura had kicked the poor wall. "It's right in front of you."

Everyone (with, of course, the exception of Momiji, who was now pretending to be The Cutest Pirate Ever!) turned to look at the wall.

"No, there isn't," they said in unison.

"Come inside and have a nice cup of tea," the caterpillar tried again.

"But… there isn't an opening," Yuki said, bewildered, "in that wall."

"Of course there is!" the caterpillar chuckled. "You try walking through it. You'll see what I mean."

Everyone (again, with the exception of Momiji, who was now battling Poseidon) exchanged dubious glances until everyone's eyes fell on Kyo.

"What?" Kyo asked defensively, though he knew perfectly well what.

"Go on then, go on!" the caterpillar cheered.

"All right, all right," Kyo grumbled, stalking over to the wall. He sniffed at it, placed his paw against it… and was surprised that there was only empty air. He stepped forward.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, suddenly excited, walking down a new hall that no one had seen until now.

Momiji, victorious from his battle and carrying an invisible bag of his booty, joined the rest of the group.

"Yarr," he said in the most adorable imitation of a pirate ever heard.

Kagura followed Kyo, and was amazed that she hadn't been able to see this hall before now.

"Thank you so much," she said to the caterpillar gratefully.

"Just remember that not everything here is what it seems," the caterpillar called after them as the entire group started down the newly discovered hallway.

---

Final Score: three hundred twenty four to one hundred eight in favor of Hatori and Ayame's team.

"Let's play Battleship now," Hiro insisted.

"Do you think Kyo and Yuki and everyone else is all right?" Tohru asked Hatori apprehensively as Ayame and Hiro went to pull Battleship out of the drawer.

To be honest, Hatori was getting a little worried as well, but he glanced down at the leg of the table where the magic string had been tied.

"It's still glowing gold," Hatori said frankly, "So they should still be okay."

Tohru seemed to relax, as if she only needed someone else's confirmation.

...

Moral of today's story: Know thy geometry.


	23. on real estate value

CHAPTER 23  
_In which the Ice Queen gives advice, the exploration catches up with the dog,  
and the housekeeper unknowingly catches a cold._

The hall within the glass castle opened into a ballroom of incredible size.

Note: That is to say that the hall was incredibly large as opposed to incredibly small.

Sunlight streamed in through the high vaulted ceilings and hit the crystal chandeliers hung on silver and gold ropes, causing the crystals to glow white and cast glittering shards of rainbows onto the marble floor far below. The air between the walls was empty and silent, broken only by shuffling footsteps of the Kyo, Yuki, Kagura, Hatsuharu and Momiji. No dust rose as they crossed into the center of the room. The entire effect - the size (large), the silence, the overwhelming _emptiness_ - was enough to make anyone feel very small.

"It's so quiet," Momiji whispered, because if you were there, you would have whispered, too. The others nodded wordlessly.

"You have questions?" a voice shot across the room so sharply and suddenly, it was like an arrow striking the ground between them. The group collectively looked at the far end of the room, just now seeing the outline of a woman dressed completely in white, long black hair spilling over her shoulders. She stepped forward into the sunlight of the ballroom.

"Some idiot dog came in here a little while ago asking about a curse, so don't bother wasting your question on that anymore," she continued in the same harsh voice. Her footfalls were clipped, softened only by the rustling of her skirt. She stopped in front of Hatsuharu and looked straight into his eyes. Hatsuharu gazed back, eyebrows raised in surprise.

"So?" the woman said, wheeling to look at Kagura. Kagura frowned and stared stolidly back.

"You're the Ice Queen?" Kyo asked.

"That was a stupid question to waste," she said, now wheeling on the poor cat. "Yes, I am."

"Way to go, stupid cat," Yuki muttered under his breath.

"Shut up!" Kyo hissed.

"We're looking for the Princess of Bevelle!" Momiji interrupted cheerily, raising his paw in the air. "Where can we find her?"

The Ice Queen crossed her arms over her chest.

"She's here in the castle. You'll find her with that dog in the hall over there," the Ice Queen said, nodding towards the hall she'd come in from.

"Thank you. I think that's all we needed to ask, right?" Momiji asked his fellow travelers. Yuki and Kagura nodded, Kyo looked sullen, but Hatsuharu was still gazing and the Ice Queen. The Ice Queen seemed to sense this, and she turned on him, still glaring

"What?" she asked.

"Why are your eyes so sad?" Hatsuharu asked. He said it quite bluntly, but also with kindness.

The Ice Queen looked shocked. Silence entered the room again, floating down from the ceiling and settling uncomfortably on the floor. The Ice Queen opened her mouth to say something, then snapped it shut.

"Hatsuharu," Yuki said quietly, "that was rude."

"She doesn't have to answer if she doesn't want to," Hatsuharu said, "but that means I can ask another question."

The Ice Queen's nostrils flared at that.

"It's none of your business!" she shouted.

"That's not an answer," Hatsuharu replied. He held out a hand towards her, and she flinched away.

"Will you come with us?" he asked.

---

After playing Battleship, The Barbie Game, Pictionary, and Rock, Paper, Scissors... Ayame had turned into a pincushion. No one had lit the fireplace, and so it had gotten gradually colder until it had hit Critical Point. The twenty-seventh round of RPS was cut short, and Tohru slid down the leg of the table with Hatori in one pocket and Ayame in the other. Hiro followed soon after.

Hatori cast a fire spell, and Tohru fished around in the Felix the Cat bag for hot chocolate ingredients. When Hatori figured the temperature was high enough, he asked Tohru to find a needle. Tohru did, though it was rather troublesome because she had to go through a haystack inside the bag before she found it. Hatori held the needle in his tail and poked Ayame, and Ayame popped back into his true form.

"I do wish there were a better counter curse," he said, sucking at his finger where a tiny drop of blood had formed. Tohru smiled sympathetically and handed him a cup of hot chocolate.

---

As soon as the Ice Queen stared right into Hatsuharu's eyes, angry and sad all at once, Hatsuharu knew, without a doubt, that he loved her. He knew that he'd loved her even before he'd met her, and all this time he'd been waiting for her to come, only he had gotten impatient and gone out to find her instead.

On some level, she knew it too, and she took his hand, albeit reluctantly.

"What's your name?" Hatsuharu asked.

"Rin," she replied.

---

Tohru had been feeling a little light-headed since arriving at the North Pole, but she had attributed this to the majesty and size of the room. Then she thought it might have been because she'd been terribly busy all day, what with the adventuring and all. Wasn't it only this morning she'd been at the house with Shigure, Kyo and Yuki after seeing the princesses off? No wonder she felt so tired. Maybe just a quick nap…

---

True to what Rin had said, Shigure was waiting in the hall with a young woman dressed in a light summer dress (the young woman was in the dress, not Shigure, who preferred yukatas and fur coats, anyway). Shigure seemed to be doing all the talking.

"And _then_ the terrible giant transformed himself into a ball of yarn, and Kyo… oh, hey, there they are," Shigure interrupted himself as the party he'd abandoned plus Rin came forward. "Princess of Bevelle, this is Kyo, Momiji, Yuki, Kagura, Hatsuharu, and you already know the Ice Queen. Everyone, this is the Princess of Bevelle."

"Where are we going, anyway?" Rin asked icily before the Princess of Bevelle had a chance to say anything on her own behalf.

"You don't know?" Yuki asked.

"And you've wasted your question," Rin snapped, and Kyo shot Yuki a self-righteous smile, of which Yuki mostly ignored.

"I only know the answers if someone asks me the right question," Rin continued. "I'm not all-knowing."

While Yuki recovered from being snapped at (he was surprisingly sensitive to impatient people, unless, of course, it was Kyo), Kagura explained about the magic thread Hatori had made for everyone.

"But I know a shortcut!" Momiji said, pulling set of keys from somewhere in his fur.

"What are those?" everyone asked with the exception of the Princess of Bevelle, who only looked curiously at the keys.

"Magic," Momiji said, winking an eye. "One opens to the school grounds," he elaborated, holding up each key in turn, "one opens my school locker, and one opens home."

With that declaration, Momiji looked around. Unlike the entrance hall, this one was full of closed doors. Momiji picked his favorite one (which, truth be told, looked exactly like all the other doors) and place the last key, a dull copper key that looked similar to a rose without thorns, into the lock.

"But won't it take you back to Fable?" Kagura couldn't help but ask.

"No," Momiji said, smiling softly. "Home is wherever Hatori is."

And before anyone could decipher that, Momiji had unlocked and opened the door, and there was a warm fire waiting, and Ayame and Hiro seemed to be having a spirited debate, and Tohru had fallen asleep with her head on the Felix the Cat bag. Hatori was the first to notice the exploration party plus the Princess of Bevelle plus Rin stumble in.

"Welcome back," he said.

...

Moral of today's story: Truly, home is where the heart is.


	24. on folding a map

CHAPTER 24  
_In which there is a brief meeting._

George the Giant was lost. During the yarn ball soccer game between Kagura and Kyo (Kagura won by a lead of two points), he had somehow ended up, of all places, on the ceiling.

Note: His situation had something to do with quantum physics and a ridiculous level of static electricity.

Anyway, since he'd had some time to think since the end of the soccer game, he had decided that A) being George, the Amazing Ball of Yarn was actually quite enjoyable and B) he would make an even more amazing scarf. Unfortunately, because he didn't know how to knit, getting from point A to point B would be difficult, even with his shape-shifting powers.

George was thinking about all of this when Kyo, Yuki, Momiji etc. came back from the glass castle.

Back on the floor, Hatori said, "Welcome back," and Ayame and Hiro both looked away from their argument, and Tohru continued sleeping because of her fever (only she didn't know about it yet because she was asleep).

Then Hiro jumped to his feet and ran full tilt at the glass castle brigade. It looked, for a moment, as though he were attempting a game of red rover, only nobody was holding hands except for Hatsuharu and Rin, but then he threw his arms around the Princess of Bevelle.

"Kisa!" he cried. Kisa, on her part, just looked surprised.

"Well, welcome back or whatever," he mumbled, suddenly self-conscious as he pulled away and shoved his hands in his pocket. "I wanted to be the one who rescued you, but..."

He shrugged like it wasn't a big deal or anything, only it was pretty obvious that it was. Kisa took his hand and gave him a small, encouraging smile.

The Exposition plus Rin plus Kisa minus Tohru then sat around in a semi circle around the fireplace in order to discuss their next move. The first decision was nominated by Kyo and seconded by Hatori, and that was that the Exposition should rest in the North Pole for a few days for Tohru to recover from her cold.

Note: Kyo, who had tried to wake Tohru up for the meeting, had realized her forehead was burning up. After asking Hatori for some advice, Hatori said that she probably just needed rest for now, and plenty of liquids when she woke up. Kagura had offered her sweater and Hatsuharu his jacket to keep her warm.

Even though the quest had started with the Exposition searching for Kisa to break the immediate curse of Shigure, Momiji, Kyo, Yuki and Hatori of being animals, when they learned that Rin had told Shigure how to break the curse of being cursed a lot, the second point of discussion was about that instead.

"We have to go back," Shigure said in no uncertain terms, and for whatever reason, everyone knew what he meant. Back to the castle where the silence overwhelmed visitors. Back to the tower with the winding stairs. Back to the room full of mirrors and Akito's presence.

Nobody looked entirely pleased with the prospect.

...

Moral of Today's story: Even with magical powers,  
there is no shortcut between point A and point B


	25. on conversation lessons

CHAPTER 25  
_In which the housekeeper definitely has a cold._

The day Tohru was born was the happiest day of her parents' lives.

"She's perfect," said her mother.

"Absolutely," said her father.

And she was.

She was absolutely perfect.

---

Tohru doesn't remember very much about her father. When she was little, she sat at Katsuya's feet while he worked, and while he worked, Tohru would play with whatever stuffed animal was her favorite that day.

Note: Games usually went as follows: "Would you like some more tea, Star Bear-san? How are your astronautical adventures going? Space pirates!"

Tohru doesn't remember what her father worked at, either, only that it involved a lot of paper. When her father paused in his work and suddenly remembered that his daughter was still sitting at his feet, he would bend down and ruffle her hair, and sometimes ask how Star Bear-san's garden was growing.

Note: Star Bear, it turns out, had a lovely garden full of silver bells and cockleshells. This was back when Tohru thought that if you buried a seashell in the garden, it would grow into a seashell tree. Of course, now that she was studying for a degree in fairy godparenting, she had since learned that seashells buried in gardens make very lovely vines.

Sometimes, though, Katsuya would ignore his papers for a few minutes and lift Tohru up with both hands and spin her around, laughing as she laughed. Tohru doesn't think she remembers his laugh either, but when she thinks something is funny and she can't help herself, she feels like there's always someone else laughing with her.

---

Tohru's father died – some complication with the medication for pneumonia. He'd been terribly allergic, apparently.

It was raining at the funeral. Long after everyone had left, Tohru and her mother stood in front of the grave, her mother's umbrella protecting Tohru and the incense still burning under Honda Katsuya's name.

"I miss him so much," Kyoko said, her voice blending in so well with the sound of rain on the umbrella and the stone walkway and the stone grave marker. They stood in silence, and Tohru held Kyoko's hand until the incense had almost burned out.

"I wish I could see him again."

Tohru felt those words in her stomach, and she didn't know why, but those words scared her.

---

When Tohru woke up, she was still on the floor with her head on the Felix the Cat bag, but a fuzzy orange sweater and a leather jacket had been draped over her. She sat up, but immediately felt dizzy, and so lied back down.

"Good morning," said a tiny voice nearby. "How are you feeling?"

Tohru turned her head against her makeshift pillow and saw Yuki and Kyo sitting together not too far from her.

Note: "Together" meaning there was still a few feet of distance between the two of them. But at least they weren't fighting yet.

"Morning?" Tohru repeated.

"You had a fever," Yuki said kindly, "so we let you rest."

Tohru sat bolt upright again.

"Oh no! I'm sorry, I--"

She was about to apologize for making the Exposition wait, but she fell back against makeshift pillow when the dizzy spell hit her again.

"It's okay," Yuki said reassuringly. "Just get some rest. Do you need anything?"

"No, I'm..." Tohru began, and then hesitated. "Actually, I'm a little hungry."

Yuki smiled.

"That's good. We'll try to figure out something to make for you, okay?"

Tohru nodded, and Yuki, after shooting Kyo a warning glance, stood on his paws and scuffled off. Kyo watched him leave out of the corners of his eyes before addressing Tohru.

"Are you... feeling all right?" he allowed grudgingly.

Tohru nodded, but she didn't really feel okay. Her throat hurt, like there was a rock stuck in it, and her eyes felt kind of funny, too. It took her a minute to realize she was crying.

"Oh no," she said, covering her face with both hands. "I'm sorry, I'm not really sad, I'm just... I'm sorry I'm making everyone wait on me."

Kyo looked alarmed, but after a moment he hunched his shoulders and looked over to the side.

"Don't worry about stuff like that," he said. "We're fine, and it's okay for you to be a little selfish anyway. Just get better and go back to smiling that dopey smile you have."

Tohru didn't know what to say to that, but she didn't have to worry about it because she was soon drifting off again.

...

Moral of today's story: Star Bears enjoy nothing better than a cup of tea  
and a listening audience.


	26. on complicated recipes

CHAPTER 26  
_In which the princess of Bevelle makes stone soup, and the animals,  
in theory, revert back into their human forms._

It had begun, and Kisa, had she been the sort, would have launched into a gale of maniacal laughter at the opening of her current project. She was not the sort to laugh maniacally, however, and so merely grinned with a certain amount of pride as she pulled one of George's thimbles from a basket that rested in one corners of the North Pole.

Note: George, though he could not knit, had a variety of hobbies that included quilting.

Kisa had taken it upon herself to break the animal curse placed Momiji, Shigure, Yuki, Kyo, and Hatori. (She rather thought Hatori made the cutest little seahorse ever, but... well... Hatori didn't seem too happy about it.) She would use the thimble as a cooking pot, gather some snow from the outside to melt for water, and find some stones for the ingredients.

At least, that was her plan, but just as she was about to go and do it, Shigure had wandered over and asked her what she was doing. Kisa shrugged a shoulder and looked shyly down at the thimble currently in her arms in a way that clearly meant, "I'm making stone soup."

Shigure, who had never heard of such a thing, was clearly puzzled.

"Stone soup, you say?"

Kisa nodded, which of course meant, "yes."

"What sort of ingredients goes into stone soup?" Shigure asked.

Kisa scrunched up her nose, and Shigure took this to mean, "There is water, and there are stones."

Then Kisa looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully (there was a ball of yarn up there, how odd!) and then looked back at Shigure.

"I suppose," she communicated through putting a thoughtful finger against her chin, "that we could add more ingredients, though. Stone soup with carrots is awfully nice."

"Carrots, right. I'll go find some," Shigure said, and away he went to find some carrots, only he didn't know where to find them. He glanced around and found Momiji, Hatsuharu and Rin playing Old Maid with a regular-sized deck of cards. Momiji, it would seem, had been carrying a deck along with his set of keys and pocket watch since the beginning of the quest. Momiji was also currently winning, while Rin only looked half-interested, and Hatsuharu was losing terribly but didn't seem to mind at all.

"Do any of you know where I can find any carrots here?" Shigure asked.

Momiji immediately perked up.

"Carrots?"

---

Shigure and Momiji had turned the colored wheel by the door that opened a path back to the Little House Plains, figuring that said plains would be a great place to search for wild carrots. On the way back, Momiji had already eaten half the carrots gathered.

"Hooray! Stone soup with carrots!" Momiji said once they were back with Kisa and he'd learned what the carrots were for.

"Stone soup with carrots?" Yuki asked curiously. This was just after Tohru had woken up and he had been wandering around the North Pole in search of something for her to eat.

Shigure nodded. "Kisa is making it."

"I see..." Yuki replied, thinking that stone soup with carrots probably wasn't that nutritious, especially not for someone with a cold.

Kisa slumped her shoulders, her posture signaling some degree of disappointment.

"What is it?" Yuki asked.

Kisa glanced down at him. "Well," her eyes expressed, "if we had snow peas..."

Yuki and Momiji exchanged curious looks. "We saw some on our way back from the glass castle, didn't we?" Yuki asked Momiji, to which Momiji nodded. And so Momiji and Shigure and Yuki ended up back at the North Pole's door, and Yuki turned the dial so they were back in the North. A few minutes later, they returned with pawfuls of snow peas and a few snowflakes on their whiskers.

Kisa smiled broadly and set the snow peas in a pile next to the carrots. Her smile was slightly off, though, as if something were still missing.

"What's wrong?" Hatsuharu asked. He and Rin had gotten tired of playing Go Fish – so tired, indeed, that Rin had actually fallen asleep and crashed face first into the floor. Hatsuharu, deciding to leave sleeping beauties lie, had wandered over to where Yuki, Momiji, Shigure and Kisa were standing.

"We're making stone soup," Shigure said.

"Stone soup with carrots and snow peas," Yuki elaborated.

"And carrots," Momiji reiterated.

"Well, that answers 'what's up?' or 'what's happening,'" Hatsuharu said with unperturbed patience, "But not 'what's wrong?'"

"Is there something wrong?" Shigure asked quizzically, looking at Kisa.

Kisa gave a little smile and a shrug as if to say, "Well... I was only thinking that if we had butter and cornstarch and perhaps…"

"Say no more," Shigure interrupted, although Kisa hadn't technically said anything. "We shall go in search of a grocery store. Is there anything else we need to add to the list?"

Kisa looked up at the ceiling again (the ball of yarn was still there!) and nodded. Momiji, who apparently kept a pad of paper and a pencil in his fur along with a deck of cards and a pocket watch and a set of keys, handed said paper and pencil to Kisa, who wrote a long list of ingredients that could be added to rock stew.

Note: That was everything, though. Besides the deck of cards, pocket watch, set of keys, paper and pencil, Momiji had nothing else hidden in his fur except for a bag of gummi bears, of which he was saving for later.

Shigure, Momiji, Yuki and Hatsuharu went back to the door and turned the dial to one color they hadn't tried yet was face up. There were four colors total - red leading to the Little House Plains, green leading to the glass castle, and now they were trying blue.

Note: Hmm… makes you wonder what that fourth color is, or maybe where it leads.

And wouldn't you believe their luck? This time, the door opened directly in front of a grocery shop.

"This is surprisingly convenient," Yuki said suspiciously, and Hatori probably would have seconded Yuki's opinion had he been there. Kyo might have as well, stupid cat that he was. However, since Yuki's group consisted of Hatsuharu, Momiji and Shigure, nobody raised any more suspicion. Everybody did, however, conveniently ignore the sign that said "NO PETS ALLOWED INSIDE." Well, Momiji noticed, but he was a rabbit and not a pet, so he didn't really mind.

---

It turned out, however, that the door did not open directly in front of the grocery store. You see, the grocery store happened to be a giant's grocery store, and was therefore of giant size. From the perspective where Hatsuharu, Momiji, Shigure and Yuki had stood in the threshold of the North Pole, the shop had looked like it was across the street when it was actually two miles away. They had to travel a very far distance indeed, only to have Momiji and Shigure chased out of the grocery store via angry giant shopkeeper with a giant broom. Yuki was ignored because he was both very small and riding on Hatsuharu's shoe. Hatsuharu and Yuki found the rest of the extra ingredients for stone soup without further mishap by themselves.

"Look, they're having a sale on magic beans," Hatsuharu said.

"We don't need magic beans," Yuki said, glancing at Kisa's grocery list. (He'd been appointed official grocery list holder). "But we do need those regular beans," he added.

"But the magic beans are on sale," Hatsuharu insisted.

"But we don't need magic beans," Yuki said, now tucking the list ito his fur.

"But they're on sale," Hatsuharu argued.

"But we don't need..." Yuki began.

The mouse and the young man sort of stared at each other for a minute, and then Yuki glanced at the grocery list again, and Hatsuharu compared the prices of the two different sorts of beans.

"How about we get both, then?" Hatsuharu compromised.

"Great," Yuki said. "Now we need parsley…"

---

Luckily, Shigure and Momiji hadn't been chased very far, and they were waiting outside. Hatsuharu was having a difficult time dragging the giant grocery bag out of the store by himself, and Yuki could only help carry the parsely. After dragging the bag two miles back to the North Pole, Kisa greeted them at the door and began working on the stone soup right away.

---

Finally, food! Kyo thought. He'd been waiting with Tohru for almost an hour for Yuki to come back with something… anything!

Kagura had apparently been playing with Ayame's hair while Ayame gave Hiro a few fashion tips. Although Hiro would deny it later, he'd found Ayame's lecture quite interesting, and had learned of several different types of knight's armor in the process. Meanwhile, Rin had been dreaming about sugarplums. She was rather fond of those.

If you recall, Hatori had gotten a book from Ayame as a souvenir in one of the earlier chapters. He wanted to read it, but it was in the Felix the Cat bag, which was currently being used as a pillow by one Tohru Honda. He'd entertained himself by joining Ayame, Kagura and Ayame's conversation, which soon turned onto the subject of the Chicken Soup series. Kagura was a huge fan.

Now, though, everyone was sitting in a circle with one of George's thimbles each, except for Yuki, who had Tohru's thimble, since she'd carried it in her pocket the entire trip. Hatsuharu had played with the Felix the Cat bag again (since Tohru wasn't using it as a pillow anymore) to try to figure out how to make a silverware drawer, but the best he could manage was a yellow plaid top hat.

"That's okay," Tohru said hastily. "We can drink stone soup from the bowl… er… thimble just fine!"

They were all about to take their first swallow when Kisa slapped a hand to her forehead.

"Oh no!" she would have said if she could speak. "I forgot to add the stones!"

Almost as if on cue, there was a collective "Poomph!" from all the Sohma's minus Kisa, who hadn't eaten any soup, and a polite gasp of astonishment from Tohru.

...

Moral of today's story: When cooking, don't forget the main ingredient.


	27. on existentialism

CHAPTER 27  
_In which we take a peek at a lovely garden, a good book,  
and color dynamics._

"Moo," Hatsuharu said, because he had always wanted to say 'moo' but had never had the appropriate opportunity before now to say it. Well, he had just recently turned into an ox because of Kisa's soup, so there it was.

Besides Hatsuharu's transformation, Rin had turned into a beautiful mare, Ayame into an elegant snake (if he did say so himself), Kagura into a cute little pig with a corkscrew tail, and Hiro into a sheep. Hiro felt a little gypped in the animal transformation department as he rather thought he was more of a wild stallion, really, or maybe some sort of carnivorous dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period.

Well, in any case, a sheep was better than what happened to Kyo, who was now a rhododendron flower complete with terracotta pot and Grade A potting soil. Yuki, with a pot that matched Kyo, was a flowering orange tree sapling, much to his surprise, and Momiji had sprouted into a tall and radiant sunflower. Shigure had turned into dogwood tree sprouting directly from the floorboards of the North Pole and thought the whole thing was rather amusing. Hatori was currently a blushing pink snapdragon hovering in midair.

There was, directly after Hatsuharu's comment, dead silence in the room for a full minute, give or take a few seconds.

Note: Had this been a comic book, page 74 would start with a close-up picture of the animals plus the plants plus Tohru and Kisa sitting together in silence. The next panel would be the same picture, but panned out. The third panel would take up the bottom half of page 74 and have an aerial picture of the North Pole in the Little House Plains. Pages 75 and 76 would be a spread of the world plus a thought bubble that would either read "...", "!", or something else to that effect.

Kisa then turned abruptly and went to go make some stone soup without the extra ingredients but with the stones. Tohru, too shocked to think of anything else to do, stood up and mutely followed to help Kisa.

---

Before we continue with the story, however, I would like to make a short detour to the great city-state of Cloud 9. Around the same time the characters in the North Pole were either saying, "moo" or "..." or "!" (depending on their mood), the four princesses from chapters 14 C and 16 were tossing a golden volley ball to one another on their daily walk outside their Castle in the Sky.

Note: The architecture of the Castle in the Sky is truly amazing since, true to its name, it's an amazing castle floating in the sky. Originally meant to be a pool (there were a few miscalculations during construction), the floating castle has stood for little over a thousand years and is the feature of several hundred books, magazine articles, and TV specials. Of course, when it was constructed, nobody was actually able get into the castle for the first hundred years until some clever person invented the hot air balloon. In fact, the construction workers weren't able to get to the Castle in the Sky during construction.

The princesses' favorite trail for walking went through the forest, and their favorite topic of conversation, at the moment, was the exact shade of Prince Yuki's eyes.

"Purple," Minami said, because she was a very straightforward sort of girl, and poetics were lost on her. She tossed the golden volleyball to herself once before setting it over towards Mai, who caught it in one hand.

"Purple?" Miya replied indignantly. "That's far too common. His eyes are _violet_."

Miya tossed the ball back to Minami, and Minami bumped the ball to Mai, who promptly dropped it and had to chase after it as it bounced away. Motoko, meanwhile, merely walked ahead of the group without saying anything at the present moment.

"What's the difference? There isn't any difference," Minami told Miya. "Purple and violet are the same thing, but purple sounds cooler. _Purple_. Prrrrr-ple. See?"

"Violet sounds better," Miya argued. "Like the flower."

"Purple!" Minami said, glaring at Miya as they continued walking side by side down the forest path.

"Violet!" Miya insisted, glaring right back.

"Actually," Mai said, catching up to Miya and Minami with the golden volleyball in hand, "There _is_ a difference between purple and violet. Purple is a mixed color of blue and red pigments whereas violet is a spectral hue of light."

Minami and Miya stopped walking and turned their glares on Mai.

"What does that have to do with anything?" they asked together in a terribly intimidating manner.

"Uh... I mean... Yuki's eyes are more the color of grape juice?" Mai stammered, because she was much more imaginative than Miya and Minami when it came to descriptions. She also wanted to discuss the exact shade of Kyo's fur, because that cat had been _so darn cute!_ but alas… she seemed to be the only sister who thought that.

Luckily, though, Mai had a collection of paint samples at home with colors called "Sunset Apricot" and "Orange Ukulele," so she would have no trouble figuring out Kyo's shade out on her own.

"Grape juice..." Miya and Minami said together thoughtfully, and then started walking forward again.

"Maybe more like plums," Minami said quickly, because Minami didn't like grape juice despite the fact that Yuki's eyes were exactly the shade of grape juice.

"Sugarplums…?" Miya suggested. Like Rin, Miya was terribly fond of those.

"Hmmm..." Minami and Mai thought aloud.

"No, you're all wrong!" Motoko cried imperiously from the head of the group, finally deigning it necessary to join the conversation. She whirled around, her long hair flaring out quite nicely as she turned to face her three younger sisters. Unfortunately, she'd done this action a bit too abruptly, and Minami and Miya and Mai all crashed into her before anyone realized what had just happened.

"Oh, sorry!" Mai said.

"But what's this about us being all wrong?" Minami asked as she stood up, and then because she was not unkind, helped Mai to her feet, as well. Miya, who enjoyed dabbling in dramatics every once in awhile, had pretended to faint with embarrassment and was now sprawled gracefully on the ground with a hand to her forehead. Motoko had already jumped to her feet and brushed off any dirt that had been bad mannered enough to dirty her skirt.

"Yuki's eyes..." Motoko said with great gravity as if her three sisters hadn't just bowled her over to the ground, "Yuki's eyes are the color of amethysts."

"Amethyst," according to Mai's collection of paint samples, would actually be fairly accurate, but grape juice was still the better match.

"Oh, brilliant!" Miya cried, quite forgetting she had fainted.

"Yes, that's perfect," Minami agreed even though she secretly liked sugarplums the best.

"Oh dear," said Mai as she first looked at her empty hands and then around her feet. "I think the golden volleyball rolled somewhere into the forest."

---

Meanwhile, Uotani and Hanajima were sitting across from each other in Dina's Diner. Ritsu was not there, unfortunately, as he had recently started a part time job elsewhere, which is quite unfortunate because Uotani and Hanajima would probably have enjoyed his company. Hanajima had taken Uotani's advice and was now reading the rest of the Chicken Soup series. So far, she had completed _Chicken Soup and the Order of the Iron Chef_ before moving to _Chicken Soup and the Goblet of Pink Lemonade_. She was currently reading _Chicken Soup and the Cook of Azkaban_ while Uotani glanced over the dessert menu.

"You know," said Hanajima in the cool distracted way people speak when they're attention is divided, "the books keep getting shorter and shorter."

"You're reading them in the wrong sequence," Uotani said in the same distracted way. "If you read the series from the first book to the last book like everybody else, they'd be getting longer."

"But I like reading them this way better," Hanajima said, and really, Uotani couldn't argue against that.

After a minute, Hanajima reached the end of the chapter (the main character, Chicken Soup, had just discovered his parents had been betrayed by they're best friend in the past – it was really quite sad) and set the book aside.

"I wonder how Tohru is doing with her new job," Hanajima said suddenly.

"It is strange that we haven't heard back from her," Uotani agreed as she set down the menu in favor of a conversation with her friend. "Do you think we ought to check up on her?"

Hanajima didn't answer right away.

"I think perhaps we should wait a little longer before doing that," Hanajima replied after a moment.

---

Since Mai was afraid of the forest, and since Minami and Miya said it wasn't they're fault Mai had dropped it, and since Motoko was the oldest and often found herself taking responsibility for the group no matter how unfair it was, Motoko ended up searching through the dense undergrowth of the forest for the golden volleyball. Although she had found a couple of lizards and a... well... it kind of looked like a cross between an alligator and a petunia (Motoko had wisely decided to avoid that plant/animal thing), she couldn't seem to find what she was looking for.

Just as she was about to give up and head back to the path where her sisters may or may not have still have been waiting, Motoko saw a mossy gray outline of a well not too far away. For some reason, she wandered over to it and looked inside.

"What the – how did you get in there?" Motoko asked aloud, because there at the bottom of the well floating in the dark water below was the golden volleyball.

"More importantly, how do you plan on getting back out again?" Motoko asked. Motoko had very little patience for Ridiculous Schemes, and it seemed to her as though the volleyball was not behaving in a rational manner. Really, what was it doing at the bottom of a well? Being utterly ridiculous, that's what.

Motoko, however, didn't need to spend very much time pondering what to do next as who should arrive but the evil wizard from chapter 14B – the very wizard whom Kagura had found in Chapter 14 B and had turned into a toad (Kagura hadn't turned him into a toad, the evil wizard had done that to himself (because of bad karma)).

"Do you need any help?" he asked.

He was in a much better mood today than before, and had since renounced his evil ways. He rather liked being a toad, as well, and had made a very good friend with a frog named Frog. Frog and Toad were going to make cookies today, and indeed, Toad was on his way to Frog's house right then.

"Yes," Motoko said. She was about to explain that a golden volleyball was now floating in the well, and would the toad please get it? but right then a tallish person with hair tied back into a neat ponytail had wandered up as well and had already reached into the well and pulled the ball out.

Note: The bottom of the well had, in fact, only been about a foot below the rim of the stones surrounding it.

"Here you go," the man said, smiling in a friendly and polite manner. He even went so far as to dry the ball with his sleeve before handing it to Motoko.

And thusly, we have introduced Kazuma into the story, who had recently finished saving the world and several quests for spiritual enlightenment and was now walking away from Motoko and Toad on his search for his students Hatsuharu and Kyo Sohma.

---

Meanwhile, everyone at the North Pole had been set right and was now perfectly human again, although Kyo would continue to smell of rhododendron blossoms for the following few days. Kisa had given the animals the stone soup to drink and had watered the plants with the broth once it had cooled. Most Sohmas immediately transformed back again without any trouble once he or she had a taste of the soup. The one who did have trouble was Hatori, because he was floating, but that was easily solved when Kisa put a bowl up to the roots like vase. After Hatori had transformed back into his tall, dark and handsome stature, the bowl was stuck on his foot for a good minute before he was able to pry it and his shoe off.

"That was really good," said Momiji, "even better without the carrots."

"My compliments to the chefs," Ayame added grandly.

"We should probably rest for one more day before heading out," Shigure said wisely.

...

Moral of Today's Story: Ask not for whom the cow moos,  
it moos for reasons of its own accord.


	28. on safety guidelines for recreation

CHAPTER 28  
_In which we travel through glass, water and thin air._

You will recall, of course, that of the four colors on the wheel above the door on the windmill, only three have been tested thus far. What's more – you may never find out where that fourth color leads, because the Exposition, which now included Yuki, Kyo, Tohru, Kagura, Kisa, Hiro, Hatsuharu, Ayame, Hatori, Shigure, Momiji and Rin, was not very interested in finding out where that fourth color led to. George, the Amazing Ball of Yarn (formerly known as George, the Amazing Shape-Shifting Giant) could probably tell you, but as he had spent the past few days stuck on the ceiling, he had decided that he actually was quite fond of traveling, and maybe whenever he became unstuck, he would change himself into a butterfly and ride the breeze to some exotic island, and so if you wanted to ask him where the fourth color led, then too bad because you will have to wait until he comes back from his vacation.

In any case, the Sohma family members plus Tohru weren't going to go through the North Pole's door, anyway. Instead, Hatsuharu opened up the Felix the Cat bag to the walk-in closet. The mirror in the closet reflected the image of the group as they hesitated in front of it.

You see, the tower where Akito lives is very far away. The fairytales that begin with "Once upon a time in a faraway kingdom" refer to the world where Tohru and company live, and you, dear reader, may never be able to reach this place even if you started walking in the right direction now and kept walking for three thousand years. Akito's tower is like that for Tohru, but for the Sohmas, there is a shortcut they can take.

You have probably guessed by now that mirrors play a significant part of the Sohma family. Akito, for example, can see through mirrors to the other side. Now you will learn that the rest of the Sohma family is able to physically pass through mirrors. It is not a very pleasant experience, but it is the only way.

Yuki, of all people, was the first to step forward. He stared at the mirror for a few seconds as everyone else stared at him, and then he turned and smiled.

"Well," he said, and if he were a little nervous, nobody thought anything of it, "let's go, then."

Tohru watched as Yuki let his smile falter a little as he stepped backwards into the mirror and disappeared.

"Oh!" Tohru gasped quietly, because even though Shigure had explained to her about the mirrors as I have explained to you, it still hadn't quite prepared her for seeing it. Also, Tohru was still getting used to seeing everybody in their human forms, and even though her feelings for Yuki were perfectly platonic and whatnot, he was very handsome, and his smile was very beautiful.

"Don't worry about him," Kyo grumped next to her, and he must have at some point slipped his hand into Tohru's hand because… well, there was his hand, and Tohru was grasping at it pretty hard.

"Should we go next?" Tohru asked. Shigure had also explained that Tohru should be able to get inside the mirror so long as a Sohma was holding her hand. Shigure was also about to offer his help when Yuki and Kyo, both scowling, had pushed him out of the way and told Tohru to ignore him.

"Go ahead," said Hatori, as he was standing nearby eavesdropping on the conversation. Hatori was quite handsome too, Tohru thought. She wouldn't admit in a million years that he made the cutest seahorse she had ever met, too. Somehow, she figured Hatori wouldn't have appreciated that compliment.

And so, with that thought, Kyo and Tohru stepped through the mirror.

---

Meanwhile, as Kyo and Tohru walked into one side of the mirror, Yuki came crashing through the opposite end. He had to take a few steadying steps forward to regain his balance, and he was very lucky that it only took a few steps as opposed to several steps, because he was now standing precariously close to an odd little pond. In fact, his toes were inches away from the bank.

Yuki, who hadn't traveled through the mirror since he was maybe eight, took in the scenery as he waited for everyone else. First off, he was in a clearing. A very quiet clearing. A very quiet clearing surrounded in impossibly straight, tall trees that seemed to grow much taller than any normal or enchanted forest Yuki had ever seen.

What was odd about the clearing, though, Yuki noticed as he looked back down at the ground (looking up at all those trees gave him a rather unpleasant feeling of vertigo), was that it was filled with little pockets of water, like the pond he had almost tripped into. Each pond also reflected odd bits of light, as if...

Yuki wasn't able to finish that thought, however, as something crashed into his back.

---

When Tohru came through the other side, she landed face-first in Yuki's back, and Kyo, half a second behind, collided into Tohru and knocked everyone backwards.

"Oomph!" said Yuki in a somewhat princely tone just before all three splashed into the pond Yuki had been previously standing in front of but was now falling into.

"I'm so sorr--" Tohru began, but since they were surrounded in water, Tohru wasn't able to finish her apology.

"-rry!" Tohru finished anyway, because suddenly they weren't surrounded in water anymore. Rather, they were surrounded by a lot of air. A few miles to Tohru's left, Kyo's right and beneath Yuki's head and rapidly approaching was the ground of some foreign place.

"Oh dear," Tohru said.

"Hey, there's the tower!" Kyo exclaimed, pointing to a spindly-looking tower that undoubtedly belonged to Akito.

"Oh that's helpful," Yuki mumbled, or might have mumbled. It was hard to tell, since they were _still falling_.

"There's a giant flying fish," Tohru added.

"Huh," Yuki and Kyo said, because, well, there was a giant fish, and it just so happened to be flying towards them.

"Yo," said the giant flying fish when it reached the trio. "Want a ride?"

"Yes, please!" Tohru exclaimed.

"Could you take us to that tower?" Yuki asked politely as wind whistled through his hair.

The fish shook his head.

"Nope, today is Wednesday," he said sadly, and maybe that explanation made sense to him, and I hope it makes sense to you too, because he didn't explain it. On their part, Yuki and Tohru and Kyo didn't really understand, but they decided not to press the matter for the moment.

"Could you please take us to the ground, then?" Tohru posed.

The fish thought that Tohru's request was rather silly, seeing as how she and her two friends were already heading in that direction. The fish had, however, been raised to show respect and display good manners, so he didn't point that out.

"Of course," the fish said. "Hop onto the Flying Fish Express! Please keep your arms and legs to yourselves and hold on!"

The flying fish was rather large in size, as previously mentioned, and his back was covered in four neat rows of three very comfortable sofa chairs each. It took some tactical mid-air maneuvering, but eventually Tohru, Yuki and Kyo had each found a sofa chair and had buckled themselves in with the seatbelts provided.

During the descent, which was now a more leisurely and less terrifying affair, Tohru and the flying fish, whose name was Merlin, had somehow struck up a conversation on alternate energy sources. While they discussed the advantages and disadvantages of Mako energy versus hydroelectricity, Yuki and Kyo just sort of glared at each other from their respective seats on either side of Tohru. Yuki and Kyo were doing a good bit of glaring before Yuki got bored and let his attention wander. Yuki's apathy only increased Kyo's glaring, but since Yuki seemed determined to watch the scenery, which involved a lot of clouds and a few smaller flying fish, Kyo had to turn his glare towards his own feet.

Merlin dropped the three adventurers on the ground and, with a friendly wave of his fin, floated off into the sky again.

"It was lovely meeting you," he called after them. "Good luck!"

"Thank you!" Tohru called back. Yuki waved his good bye, and Kyo continued to glare at his feet.

Yuki, Kyo and Tohru were now all alone in a small clearing in a larger wood that was very unlike the forests in La La Land. In this world, for example, it was winter, and the ground and trees around them were covered in a heavy blanket of snow. Most of the trees were thick with green pine needles (it smelled quite nice here), although there were a few spindly trees who looked rather cold and like they would rather it be spring already.

Luckily, everyone had brought their respective winter gear from the North Pole. Even if they hadn't, though, there was apparently a species of tree in this world that specialized in bearing coats instead of pine cones. There was also some evidence that someone besides flying fish ought to live around here, because there was a lamp post burning in the middle of the clearing.

The lamp post, Kyo thought, was very comforting in the middle of the wood, though he wasn't able to explain why. He, Yuki and Tohru sort of migrated towards it even though it gave no light the sun couldn't compete against nor heat that could significantly push the cold away.

"The tower was in this direction, wasn't it?" Yuki asked, nodding his head in a general Northern direction. Now that they were on the ground, it was difficult to see the tower, what with the forest through all the trees and whatnot.

Yuki had crossed his arms over his chest, and Kyo noticed that his face was pale. For maybe half a second, Kyo was able to look at Yuki without glaring, but then Yuki noticed and looked back without glaring, too. Then Kyo went back to glaring at his feet.

"Uh… yes? I think it was?" Tohru volunteered.

Tohru's statement with a question mark at the end did not exactly inspire confidence, but since there wasn't much else they could do but pick a direction and start walking, that's what they did.

...

Moral of Today's Story: When swimming, don't forget your parachute.


	29. on becoming a film noir detective

CHAPTER 29  
_In which… actually, we're not even sure what's going on anymore._

Kagura stepped through the mirror of the Felix the Cat Walk-In Closet after Kyo and slipped through the other side. Unlike Yuki, who had merely stood gaping at the scenery, Kagura wandered around. She may have been slightly concerned that Yuki and Kyo and Tohru weren't there, but something had been on her mind lately, and she was rather distracted.

A moment later, Hatori stepped rather gracefully through the mirror. Hatori might have also thought it was odd that Yuki, Kyo and Tohru were missing, but a few seconds later, Momiji, Kisa and Hiro, all holding hands, stumbled over each other at his feet, so Hatori was rather distracted, as well, and he didn't notice. After Hatori managed to shuffle the three youngest members of the Exposition to their feet and out of the way of the mirror, Ayame and Shigure waltzed through together.

"Where is my darling younger brother?" Ayame inquired airily.

Back at the North Pole, Hatsuharu and Rin stood together for another moment after everyone else had already disappeared through it.

"Well?" Rin asked, perhaps a little petulantly. She had her fingers laced into the Hatsuharu's sleeve, and she wasn't really looking at him.

The corners of Hatsuharu's lips quirked up into a small smile. Before Rin could figure out what he was doing, Hatsuharu bent over and placed a light kiss on her forehead. Okay, well, Hatsuharu had aimed for her forehead, but Rin had also been doing this impatient little dance that involved shuffling her feet, so he actually missed and the kiss landed on her right eyebrow.

"Were you waiting for me?" Hatsuharu asked.

Rin opened her mouth to deny such an accusation, but really she had been waiting, so...

"Let's go, then," she said, and she meant _that _to sound impatient (as opposed to petulant), but by the look in Hatsuharu's face as they stepped into the mirror, she may as well have said, "You are my honey bunches of oats, the bees knees and the cat's pajamas," and other such various romantic nonsense.

Well, Rin thought, maybe Hatsuharu didn't need words like that. Maybe just holding his sleeve was good enough.

---

We will, for the time being, leave the main party of the Exposition to their own devices for the next few chapters. Suffice to say that the group as a whole is concerned for the safety of Tohru, Kyo and Yuki, but Hatori has great confidence in Yuki's deductive reasoning, and Kagura has incredible faith that nothing wrong can happen to Kyo. Momiji thinks everything will work out just fine, because he is that sort of person. Hatsuharu believes, for whatever reason, that Tohru, Kyo and Yuki together can overcome anything. It is a combination of Hatori, Kagura, Momiji and Hatsuharu's thoughts and feelings that somehow become the common belief for everyone, and so, through an almost unanimous decision (Hiro just _had_ to be the dissenting vote to be difficult), the group elected to continue to Akito's Tower without creating a search party along the way. They would undoubtedly meet their wayward Exposition members in due time.

It's really too bad that the Exposition will be missing from the next few chapters since their story involved a doctor, spaceships, British accents, and a phone booth that could travel through time.

It's a shame you missed out on all that, because it was all very fantastic and interesting.

---

As you may recall, we left Yuki, Kyo and Tohru walking in a winter wonderland in search of Akito's tower. Kyo, because he was paying more attention to his feet rather than where he was going, looked up to discover that Yuki and Tohru were nowhere to be seen.

He looked left, right, and left again. Then he looked back down at his feet. Behind him, of course, were his own footsteps. And, because Kyo can be terribly clever when he's actually paying attention to what's going on, Kyo retraced his footsteps back until he found where Yuki and Tohru's footsteps had parted from his, after which, of course, he followed theirs. He had gone a good distance when he noticed a third pair of footprints next to Yuki and Tohru's marks ahead of him, which suggested that a third person had joined them. At least, Kyo assumed it was a third person. It might have been an animal, seeing as how they were in the middle of a forest and all, and there weren't many people out here, but a lot of animals. Before Kyo could continue his search, he heard someone calling his name.

"Kyo-kun!" Tohru called, running up from behind him. He turned to face her as she stopped just short of running into him, doubled over and caught her breath.

"Where's the rat?" Kyo asked. It wasn't that he was concerned or anything, but it wasn't like Yuki to let Tohru wander around by herself. Only Kyo was inobservant enough to let something stupid like that happen.

Tohru smiled up at him.

"We saw you pass by just now, so I ran ahead to get you," she said brightly.

Kyo was understandably confused about this.

"But if you were back there, whose footprints are these?" he asked, pointing to the footprints in the snow. Tohru, who apparently hadn't noticed the footprints until now, looked at them curiously.

"Heffalumps?" she guessed.

"Maybe, except they're different. The footprints, I mean."

"A heffalump and two other animals? Like a woozle and a wizzle?"

"What's a wizzle?" Kyo asked.

"It's kind of like a woozle, but not," Tohru answered.

Kyo tried to picture what a wizzle might look like if it were like a woozle but not. Then, Kyo remembered something. He'd learned from Kazuma that heffalumps loved honey, and if you found a heffalump, you were bound to find some. His stomach growled at the thought. They'd been trekking through the snow for a long time, and he probably wasn't the only one who was hungry.

Sharing this insight to Tohru, they both agreed to follow the footprints to see if there was a jar of honey at the end of the trail. They had only traveled a few hundred yards, however, when Kyo stopped again.

"What's wrong?" Tohru asked.

"There are more footprints," Kyo answered. And, indeed, there were. Two more animals had joined the first three. Moreover, some of the animals' footprints were similar. It could have been two heffalumps, two woozles and one wizzle; a heffalump, two woozles and two wizzles; or two heffalumps, one woozle, and two wizzles.

At this point, Kyo wondered if it was wise to continue the hunt. Heffalumps and woozles (he wasn't sure about wizzles, but though the footprints were different, they were generally the same size) were only slightly larger that a Very Small Animal, and they weren't aggressive creatures. If there was a large enough group of them, however, they might be dangerous.

Kyo considered going back, but he was still hungry, and he was sure that Tohru wasn't faring any better. He thought about continuing, but he didn't want to put Tohru in any danger. He thought about sending Tohru back as he went ahead, but he didn't like the idea of sending her back alone.

Why wasn't Yuki here, Kyo thought. He was supposed to be the one who took care of things like that. He was good at it. Kyo obviously sucked.

"Kyo-kun, are you all right?" Tohru asked.

"I'm fine," Kyo snapped, and then, realizing he snapped, only felt worse.

"I'm fine," he repeated, more calmly this time. "I... I'm just worried, I guess. I dragged you out here, but it's not like I know what I'm doing."

To his surprise, Tohru laughed.

"I don't know what I'm doing either," she said, "but when we're together, it's nice, isn't it?"

Kyo couldn't help it: he smiled.

And he didn't notice it, but the tips of Tohru's ears blushed a faint pink color when he did.

"Let's keep going," Kyo decided.

So they did. After another few hundred yards, however, they were again presented with two extra pairs of footsteps, indicating that there were now three heffalumps, three woozles and one wizzle, or… any combination of three and three and one, really.

Before Kyo could come up with a decision dealing with that, however, Yuki Sohma finally wandered up with a puzzled expression on his face.

"What are you both doing?" he asked, clearly at a loss.

Kyo and Tohru exchanged glances. Somehow, they felt vaguely embarrassed, though they weren't sure why.

"We were looking for a heffalump," Tohru volunteered sheepishly.

"A... heffalump," Yuki repeated flatly. Kyo wished the earth would open up and swallow him up whole. No, wait, he didn't wish that. He wished the earth would swallow Yuki up, only Tohru might feel bad about that, so maybe not.

"Yes, and Kyo… and _we_ thought that we'd be able to find honey if we found a hefallump, so we were following its footprints in the snow, along with what we think might be a woozle or a wizzle, or a few woozles and wizzles," Tohru explained.

"What's a wizzle?" Yuki asked

"It's kind of like a woozle, but not," Tohru and Kyo said in stereo.

"Is it?" Yuki asked, but he shook his head sharply. "No, never mind. Look, Tohru and I went around this island of trees once before ending up back at the beginning, and then you showed up and did the same thing after us. Then, after Tohru went to fetch you, you both went around again two more times."

Kyo and Tohru exchanged glances again.

"Oh," Tohru said. "So we were walking in circles, then."

...

Moral of today's story:  
And when you look back to find only one pair of footprints behind you in the sand,  
remember that those are your footprints and not those of a heffalump.


	30. on restricted areas

CHAPTER 30  
_In which a skull speaks, a butterfly sings, and Hanajima finally catches the bus._

It is now important we travel back to Fafaraway where Uotani and Hanajima were both looking rather pointedly at the wall between platforms nine and ten of the train station.

"Well..." Uotani said with very little confidence and a liberal amount of doubt. "Let's do this."

And with that, the two young women pushed their way through the barrier to Platform Nine and Three Quarters.

No, actually... no they didn't. Uotani ran face-first into the bricks and squashed her nose, and Hanajima, who was going to go second (really), watched. After impact, Uotani peeled herself from the wall and gingerly touched the bridge of her nose. Finding that it was, indeed, not broken, she glanced back just in time to see what may have been fleeting smile pass over Hanajima's face.

"You knew dat was going do habben," Uotani accused.

"Beg pardon?" Hanajima asked innocently.

"It's because you don't have tickets," said a mysterious, disembodied voice.

Hanajima and Uotani glanced first to the right, then to the left, then to each other, and then down. Standing between them was a smallish boy with dark, messy hair and round glasses perched on his nose. The two young women stared at him, and he pulled the glasses off and placed them into the pocket of his school jacket. Then Hanajima calmly folded her arms around the boy's shoulders in a gentle hug.

"Hello Megumi," Hanajima said to her younger brother.

"Hey, squirt," Uotani grinned, adding her arms into the hug to make a Megumi sandwich. "Welcome home."

"I'm home," Megumi agreed.

---

Megumi, as we have mentioned above, is Hanajima's younger brother. He has thus far in the story been studying at Wizarding School, which is why he hasn't been able to properly introduce himself.

He says he's very pleased to meet you. What was your name again?

Now that Megumi was back for the summer holiday, the first thing he wanted to do was to visit the fountain in the center of the square. It was tradition for returning students to make a wish and throw a coin into the fountain every summer. At least, it was tradition for Hanajima, Uotani and Tohru when they were going to school, and Megumi adopted it as his own.

This was the first year that Tohru wasn't here.

Megumi had an important mission, however, and even though he wasn't precisely sure what it was, he knew it was somehow related to Tohru, and he knew that, if all went well, it would somehow help her. Megumi had wanted to work on it earlier, but unfortunately, he wasn't able to get any help from his teachers (something about Dark Magic and Dire Consequences...?). Now that he was home, though, he could ask Uotani and his sister for help, which is what he did after he made his wish at the fountain. (What kind of wish was it? A secret...)

"I remember Hanajima mentioned you said something in your last letter," Uotani recalled. "What did you need help with?"

The three were now sitting on the rim of the fountain in the square. It was early in the afternoon on Wednesday, so the sun was shining bright and hot overhead in a clear blue sky. Because it was the middle of summer, too, it was very hot, but the spray of the fountain kept them cool. Uotani and Hanajima had even taken off their shoes and had dipped their respective feet into the water, but Megumi had refrained. (He had considered jumping in, but was still unsure if it was worth the wet underwear.)

From his school bag, Megumi pulled out a bundle of cloth the size of a bowling ball and began to unwrap it. The bundle got smaller and smaller until he finally peeled off the last layer to reveal the bleached white surface of a skull.

"I've been trying to get it to speak," Megumi began to explain. "However -- "

Before Megumi was able to finish that thought, though, Hanajima had gently taken the skull from him and was inspecting it with some mild curiosity. Something seemed to crackle where her fingers touched the bone, and for an instant, the hollow eyes lit into a dull green glow.

"Like, _ow_. That, like, hurt, okay?" said the skull.

"My apologies," Hanajima said, handing the skull back to Megumi.

"Now what?" Uotani asked Megumi.

Megumi stared into the skull's eye sockets.

"Now we need to ask it where we can find the cat," Megumi said.

Which was really quite simple, so Uotani asked, "Where do we find the cat?"

The skull didn't answer at first, and the three friends got the distinct feeling that it was ignoring them. Uotani let it be for about a minute before she snatched it up and started shaking it in her hands.

"Hey, you, I asked you a question," she said heatedly. Uotani didn't like rude people, and apparently rude skulls were no better.

"I'm not, like, a Magic Eight Ball. I totally don't have to tell you anything," the skull said. Then it let out a keen, high-pitched laugh that was like nails on chalkboard.

---

The three friends tried everything. Uotani threatened and cajoled, Hanajima bargained and insinuated, and Megumi even asked politely, but nothing would convince the skull to dispatch any helpful information. Finally, around two in the afternoon, the ice cream truck came by the square, and Uotani, Megumi, and Hanajima took a break from their interrogation session for ice pops and conversation.

Sometime during their conversation, Uotani let slip that she was saving up for a vacuum cleaner. Sliver, her broom, was getting a little too old to ride now, and Uotani also suspected that Sliver was ready to settle down with Flora, the feather duster next door, of whom Sliver had been flirting with for years but never actually got around to seriously dating.

"What I really want is the 1967 Dust Devil," Uotani was saying to Megumi and Hanajima. "Charcoal and stainless steel, and I'd get it detailed with red butterflies, like Kyoko-san's."

Note: Uotani's role model was the Legendary Red Butterfly, Kyoko, who also happens to be Tohru's mother. When Kyoko rode her vacuum cleaner, it was like a butterfly flying... the fluttering red light of the power button soaring through the night sky.

"I mean," Uotani continued, "You can't knock a good broom. More reliable, easier maintenance... and I guess there's something to be said for tradition. But a vacuum cleaner - that's something else."

Hanajima and Megumi nodded. Sitting next to them on the fountain, the skull looked bored and ignored.

There was a moment of comfortable silence in which the three friends chewed on their ice pops and kicked their feet through the water of the fountain.

"I prefer the bus," Hanajima decided thoughtfully, "because you meet such interesting people."

Uotani laughed.

"Yeah, that's true. I'm sure lots of people find you interesting."

Uotani was teasing, but she meant it in a kind way, and Hanajima took it in the way it was intended.

"Of course," Hanajima said with a smile.

---

Around four in the evening, Uotani, Hanajima and Megumi had pretty much forgotten the skull and were now going over the finer adventures Megumi had witnessed during the school year. Of course, Megumi had written regular letters to his sister, and of course Hanajima shared these letters with Uotani (and Tohru before Tohru left), but it was always more fun listening to the story than reading it, especially because Megumi sometimes added sound effects.

"In the first trial," began Megumi, "Each champion had to capture a golden egg from a dragon's nest. The first champion made it look easy - she just walked right up and took it before the dragon knew she was there. The second champion, though, tried to distract the dragon first, and he transfigured a cactus into a dog. The dragon left the nest to chase the dog away, because it was barking. The second champion had almost got to the egg when -"

But whatever happened next, Megumi wasn't able to say because his voice was drowned out by the shrill voice of the skull.

"That's it! I can't take it!" the skull squealed suddenly. "All you do is talk, talk, talk -- I thought you were looking for a cat!"

"Yes, that's right..." Uotani remembered suddenly.

"But you wouldn't answer us," Hanajima explained reasonably.

The skull sort of rattled on the rim of the fountain, as if it were trying to nod vigorously but couldn't quite manage without a neck.

"And I still won't tell you!" said the skull.

"Then what's your problem?" Uotani asked irritably.

"What happened next?" Hanajima asked Megumi.

"The dragon lost interest in the --" Megumi began.

"Aren't you curious at all?" the skull asked, interrupting Megumi's exciting tale for the second time. Megumi sighed, Uotani glared, and something like a white pinwheel snapped over Hanajima's head. Both Uotani and Hanajima wanted to say, no, they were not interested in the least, but then they remembered that they were trying to help Megumi.

It is possible that the conversation involving the skull would have continued to go round and round in circles with Uotani asking it questions and the skull not responding, but right then, a cool wind brought a fluttering butterfly down from the bright blue sky overhead.

"Yo," said the butterfly as he landed on the crown of the skull.

"Hey," said Uotani. The sudden appearance of a butterfly was something of a surprise, but Uotani figured it was not unwelcome. Megumi and Hanajima nodded their greeting.

You may recall from previous chapters a certain giant who could shape-shift, and who also longed to travel. Well, he had finally remembered how to transfigure himself into a butterfly, and he was taking the scenic route to Hawaii, where his sister lived.

"It sure is hot today," said George, the Super Sonic Shape-Shifting Butterfly. "A scorcher, above average temperature. The dog days of summer. Hot times, summer in the city. Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty."

Note: When George transfigures himself into a certain creature, he has a tendency to take on characteristics of that creature. Butterflies only know songs and poetry, and anything else they hear, so their speech is a bit disjointed.

"Yes, quite," Hanajima agreed.

"Alas, poor York, I knew him well," continued the butterfly in an almost remorseful tone. Then, in a brighter voice, he said, "He was always skin and bones, you know, and now he's only bones. Well, only a skull. A head above the rest! I ain't got no-bo-dy."

"I resent that," said the skull.

"Oh, you know each other?" Uotani asked, quite surprised.

"His name was York, you said?" Megumi questioned. Another cool wind blew down from the sky, sweeping around the group and rippling the water of the fountain as Megumi took sudden interest in the skull again.

---

Somehow, and nobody is really certain how, Megumi convinced the skull to tell them the way to find the cat. They were to take a bus, which pleased Hanajima, to a clock, and they would then need to enter the clock.

Uotani, Hanajima and Megumi sat at the bus stop far on the other side of town just outside the Relatively Dark Forest. Megumi was able to finish the story about the dragon, and Hanajima and Uotani both told of their adventures in the Relatively Dark Forest, as well as their love of the Chicken Soup series.

"I can't stand that the author hasn't written anything more in so long!" Uotani complained.

"Yes, it is irritating," Hanajima concurred.

"It sounds interesting," Megumi agreed.

"I have the most recent book with me, if you're interested," Uotani said.

Megumi said he was, and Uotani gave the book to him before she realized he was probably going to read the series backwards like his sister. Oh well, too late to take it back now.

Note: Megumi did not, however, read the series backwards. He waited until he got the first book, and he read the first book itself from the last chapter to the beginning before moving to the second book. In any case, he wouldn't have been able to read the last book first, anyhow, because of the events which will take place in the next chapter.

Megumi had just begun to flip through the book to look at the pictures when there came on the wind a faint yowling sound. Uotani and Hanajima and Megumi all looked up, trying to find the source of the sound.

"A cat," Hanajima said, and in less than an instant, a large cat with eight legs (rather than the standard four) came running up the path, its yellow eyes glowing in the setting sun.

"A cat bus," Megumi clarified, closing the book and putting it in his bag. He did not, however, remember to close his bag, and the bag remained open as he stood from the bus stop bench.

The cat bus slowed to a stop in front of the three and looked at them curiously before making the same yowling sound it had earlier. Then, it grinned.

"I didn't know cats could grin," said Uotani.

"They all can," Hanajima said. "And most of them do."

The doors of the cat bus opened to reveal a set of plush stairs that led to very soft-looking seats. Hanajima was the first to step inside, and she was followed by Uotani, who was followed by Megumi. Megumi pulled his glasses out from the pocket of his school jacket and placed them on his nose again before sitting between the two young women.

The cat yowled for a third time, but this time, he seemed to be asking a question.

"To the clock, please," Megumi said. And with that, the cat took off with a leap and a bound, leaving the bus stop and the Relatively Dark Forest and, perhaps, Fafaraway itself behind entirely.

...

Moral of Today's Story: Running into walls is a generally bad idea  
unless, of course, you have a ticket.


End file.
